The Twitter platform was very open. This is why it grew like wild fire in tech circles. Then over time the Twitter company became predatory (claimed it wouldn't have it's own app, but then launch it's own), at first nobody cared because the v1 api was solid and anyone could make a client or a bot. Then over time they started going after clients and at one point said third party clients are outlawed (this was immediately retracted, but this didn't stop them from iterating in ways which broke clients).

As a cry to stop this tyranny things like "app.net" were proposed. Then few years after that mastodon and a bunch of others which are not around anymore.

When I was using Twitter the most, I finally installed the official app after using a few clients over the years. Now when I use Twitter it is only to broadcast tweet and I just use Firefox on Android using the official mobile site.

After messing with Twitter in a number of different ways over the years I decided it isn't worth it. There are a graveyard of open source clients which talk to twitter over api v1 in all languages.

Also did you hear they can just ban presidents?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/tech/trump-twitter-ban/index....

https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....