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If someone spoofs your user agent and sends a ton of traffic to Twitter, what would you rather they do?

It's like when someone spoofs your credit card - the bank blocks it, and sends you a new one. Inconvenient, yes - but better than the alternative.

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If someone spoofed my user-agent and was spamming with it, and they blocked it, I would be annoyed, but I hope I would be understanding that they were doing what they need to maintain their service, and I was unfortunate collateral.

When they pre-emptively ban my user-agent because someone might steal it and spam with it, but don't apply the same rules to themselves and their partners, then I get annoyed.

The important point here is that your app is open-source and you chose to distribute the keys with the source code, rather than require each person who builds it from source to get their own API keys.

I think Twitter's position - that you should not have done this - is completely reasonable.

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