While users could log into Tweetbot and browse tweets, some said they couldn’t post anything to Twitter through the service without getting an error saying they had reached a “data limit”. But now users say they can’t log in at all.
“And now dead again, along with some old unused API keys, proving this was intentional and that we and others were specifically targeted,” Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad writes on Mastodon. “I wouldn’t have exchanged the keys in the first place if there was even an ounce of communication.”
The customer stopped coming online because of everything Twitter did. Haddad tells The edge that they hadn’t heard from Twitter, so “they decided to start using new API keys and see if that fixes the problem.” This allowed Tweetbot to temporarily avoid service interruptions even when it was put into a semi-working state.
As indicated by iOS developers Mysk, Tweetbot likely had issues when it came back online, as it used different API keys that imposed significantly lower limits on its activity. “Twitter API restricts new apps to low limits,” explains Mysk. “All Tweetbot users now share a limit of 300 posts per 15 minutes.”
Things started to break down last Thursday when users found themselves unable to access third-party Twitter apps, including Tweetbot, Twitterific, and the Android version of Fenix. Despite widespread confusion, Twitter and CEO Elon Musk have not yet publicly acknowledged the outage, nor have they contacted developers to let them know what’s going on. Meanwhile, Twitterific and Fenix on Android are still suspended.
According to a report of The information, Twitter may have purposely disabled third-party apps. Internal messages reviewed by the outlet show a senior software engineer saying the glitch is “intentional.” Another post reportedly says Twitter is getting ready to issue statements to developers affected by the outage, though it’s unclear when that will be ready.
Update, 7:10 PM ET: Updated to reflect that Tweetbot is now offline again.
