Twitter stops working for third-party clients, users and developers don’t know if its a bug or policy issue

Many individuals have reported issues with Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Echofon, and other third-party Twitter clients since late Thursday night as it appears that Twitter has not informed the creators of the apps about the issue. The co-creator of Tweetbot, Paul Haddad, responded to a post by tech writer Casey Newton on Mastodon at 11:10 PM, ET on Thursday, saying that some third-party clients were having problems but that there had been no word on whether the problems were due to a bug or an amended policy. There has been speculation that this may be more of a sudden policy move than an API bug because of Twitter’s patchy experience with third-party clients and the company’s recent history of making changes without warning that had seemingly unanticipated effects. Early in 2011, Twitter explicitly requested that developers cease creating client applications; in the middle of 2012, it modified its API to severely restrict them; and finally, in 2018, it abolished auto-refresh and push alerts.