As much as it sucks, YouTube has the same clause and it makes a lot of sense for companies who monetize on ads.
The fact that it was like that until now was bad for Twitter’s revenue.
The fact that it was like that until now was bad for Twitter’s revenue.
Twitter users are a mix of passive consumers and active content creators and the most prolific and high value content creators tend to use third party clients and platforms. Seeing as though those people are the entire reason you have all those returning eyeballs on Twitter for advertisers to monetise in the first place you really want to do everything you can to make their experience as best as it can be.
On top of that, the proportion of Twitter's user base that were using apps like Tweetbot or Twitterrific is by all accounts minuscule, so the impact on overall advertising revenue can't be huge. And given how many of those users appear to have been prolific tweeters whose content attracts others to the platform I'd say it's more than offset. There are also media reports that Tweetbot and Twitterrific had to pay for some API V2.0 features.
There's no way this decision went through a proper business case analysis and was modelled for its impact on revenues. I'm guessing it's just Musk being capricious as usual and having nobody able to push back.
Or they could have made a promoted tweets api and mandated in their terms of service that third party clients showing a timeline must include promoted tweets every now and then.
Even if they implemented it correctly you wouldn't really trust a 3rd party to show your ads and risk strikes on your account.
you have to make sure you only show certain companies ads next to certain content, or they will pull out.
therefore you need to control the client. only show tier 2 ads next to nsfw content, etc.
they also aren't going to show certain promoted tweets on certain hashtags, topics, etc.
Doesn’t HN have a policy against this sort of thing?
I wonder why we couldn't just get something like: "If you create a third party UI, you must include the following ad web component in the interface: https://github.com/... and the supporting mechanisms for that (user ID/cookies/whatever)"
But instead, many companies attempt to disallow third party clients and any reverse engineering in general, whereas the few that do allow it don't think about the possibility of monetization in third party clients (legally enforced), or just have to deal with such configurations not being supported.
And if the current ad technology doesn't work that way, then what prevent us from making it work that way? Why should the party that displays an ad always be the same one that's benefiting from it financially? Why couldn't I have some third party UI for a popular site that solves my personal gripes with the UI, while still showing ads on the behalf of that company that owns the original platform, so I don't get my socks sued off of me?
If you own the user experience, you can push users into _your_ most profitable offerings. And it works shockingly well.