On: Twitter Suspends UberTwitter And Twidroyd For Violating Policies

[colomon]

I just tried twidroyd, and my feed for the last three hours only contains these two tweets:

Support: UberTwitter, twidroyd, and UberCurrent have been suspended due to policy violations. Read more here: http://t.co/HHGa9k1

Support: Want to keep using Twitter on your phone? Download an official Twitter client here: http://t.co/rxwSYuW

[citricsquid → colomon]

Wait, so Twitter support did that? I guess they can but it seems slightly sleezy.

[stavros → citricsquid]

On the contrary, how would most people know if it weren't for those tweets? Granted, we were also emailed, but this seems like good sense.

[Pyrodogg → stavros]

You got an email? from Twitter or UberMedia? I haven't received anything from either party except these tweets.

Edit: On second thought, I don't know what sort of personal communication standard I can hold UberMedia to. I don't think you actually need to register with them to use the client so they might not know who their users are to contact them. Well, apart from the 2.5 million twitter followers their account has.

[stavros → Pyrodogg]

Yep, I just got an email from Twitter a few minutes ago. The text was the one that's in the article.

[dtran → Pyrodogg]

I don't know the details on whether UberMedia asked for your email, but Twitter can email any Twitter account that has authorized UberTwitter regardless.

[Pyrodogg → citricsquid]

Yes. Apparently if you keep trying to make api calls with a banned app they keep feeding you these tweets.

[albedoa → citricsquid]

Why does that seem sleazy?

[notahacker → albedoa]

Promoting your own app to all users of a rival client you've just suspended raises a few (quite possibly unwarranted) suspicions about their motivations. If they wanted to avoid that they could have mocked up something akin to the "Browser Choice" Microsoft got pushed into offering.

[tofumatt → notahacker]

They're offering users who probably just want to use Twitter easy/quick access to an alternative client so they can get back to tweeting. Given that the app they used to use was banned for privacy violations, the fact that it's the official app is probably a good thing in terms of trust.

[nhangen → tofumatt]

If that is the case, then why not direct them to Twitter.com?

[stavros → nhangen]

Because, if I wanted to use twitter.com, I wouldn't be using an app.

[albedoa → notahacker]

Oh, I took the parent to mean that injecting messages into the stream of the suspended apps is sleazy.

[nhangen → citricsquid]

Incredibly sleazy, especially since these clients are soon to be fixed and probably brought back into the API.

I'm all for enforcing a license, but I don't think that last line was necessary.