An open letter to Elon Musk and the Twitter team

Dear Elon and the Twitter team,
My name is Slade Watkins, I’m a Nintendo news journalist and web developer. I realize that’s a weird way to start out, but I’m writing to appeal to you to reverse your decisions regarding the Twitter API. (You might not see this, which is 99.999% likely, but it’s definitely worth the shot.)

Following Twitter’s decision to “[enforce] its long-standing API rules,” many apps (including those geared towards users with accessibility and other special needs) ceased working. This raised many concerns within the Twitter community, and has been a decision that has been met with a lot of pushback on the Twitter Dev account’s Tweets about it, and across the platform as well. It’s not a decision folks like.

Let me back-track to share a quick slice of history here: Tweetie was a third-party Twitter client that was acquired by Twitter in 2010, so the company could form its own official iOS app. Up until that point, third-party apps were the only way to access the Twitter service on mobile devices.

For some, they grew accustomed to the apps they were using (such as Echofon) and have stuck with them since. For others, it might be their only option, an example being the Twitter iOS app, which doesn’t support iOS devices from 2014 or earlier (which still receive occasional security updates from Apple.)

The truth is, these apps have existed for decades, alongside the official Twitter iOS app (even when it was Tweetie), and have never gone against Twitter’s API rules and regulations. In fact, Twitter has had a history of working with those apps to gather feedback on the API and improve it for developers, as it made Twitter better for everyone.

From what we know, third-party social media clients (some of which a crucial tool for businesses to manage a wide variety of their accounts) make up a small percentage of platform user bases. As of 2018, Twitter’s third-party client usage by its users only came in at around 1.1% of its active user base. That number has remained mostly the same since, as most new users (and even some older users) have migrated to the official app for the latest features, even if they’re not a fan of its look and feel (operation and aesthetic-wise).

It is my belief that all good platforms should be open, and that anyone interested should be allowed to build upon them. I, myself, have built on Twitter’s API v2, and have found it to be a lovely experience. It has been heartbreaking to see that being denied to apps with unique approaches to how a social media client should operate.

I hope that you’ll reconsider this, and lift the suspensions you’ve put into place. As I’ve stated, it is my belief that Twitter should be an open platform for anyone to join, create content for, and build upon. Just as it has always been since its inception.

Thanks for your time,
— Slade