> They basically use the HTML pages instead of the APIs.

For Twitter in specific, isn't HTML scraping vastly preferable to using their official APIs? Otherwise you run into pretty arbitrary usage limits and missing features.

There's a small list of services where I think I prefer HTML scraping and browser piloting for a 3rd-party client: Twitter, Patreon, Facebook, LinkedIn, a few others. Services where the official APIs are underdeveloped or crippled to the point of almost uselessness.