

Twitter is forcing us to drop ability to flattr creators by favoriting tweets - chinmoy
http://blog.flattr.net/2013/04/twitter-is-forcing-us-to-drop-users-ability-to-flattr-creators-by-favoriting-their-tweets/

======
loudin
It's extremely clear that Twitter is turning its back on the developer
community who helped the company reach success. We were the first adopters of
Twitter, encouraged our friends to join, and made it mainstream. Now, when we
want to build apps on their platform, Twitter tells us they're closed - that
they don't want to return the favor.

So, yeah, I can see how Flattr, a service that revolves completely around a
community of people who actually appreciate others for their work, is upset at
the company whose notion of "thanks" is a Cease and Desist.

As developers, we should be alarmed - we shouldn't be blaming people for 'not
reading the terms of service' or saying that 'Twitter has the right to do what
it wants'. These answers might be technically right, but they don't capture
the true feeling of what is right, which is that developers should build apps
that enhance Twitter's ecosystem.

So, that's it for Twitter for me. I only expect Twitter to get worse about
their developer policies in the future, and I don't want to be a part of a
community that treats developers poorly.

~~~
lotso
Is it worse if Twitter lets flattr do this and then shuts them down later?

------
kjackson2012
In another era, maybe 5+ years ago, any API provider that had such draconian
service terms such as Twitter would have been promptly dropped by most API
developers.

Why do people continue to develop to Twitter's API? It's obvious that Twitter
doesn't want people to use their API. In my years of developing on top of 3rd
party APIs from Microsoft, Oracle, etc, I've never seen such contempt for
developers as I see from Twitter and Facebook. Developers should abandon
Twitter en masse.

But they don't. Developers keep using the Twitter API and they keep getting
shut down after spending significant time developing their app. Fool me once,
shame on them, fool me twice, shame on me.

I think developers keep doing it because they are still hoping for that one
app that will get them acqu-hired by Twitter or Facebook, so that they can
become fabulously rich. It's the one big difference between now and 5+ years
ago, and especially before the Instagram acquisition.

~~~
skrebbel
Your comment is so filter bubbled that it hurts.

People keep developing against the Twitter and Facebook APIs because that's
where the users are.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Why does it matter how many users there are if you aren't allowed to make
money off of them?

Twitter is far worse than FB in this regard. Unless you can figure out a way
to generate revenue by putting content into the stream (eg content
publishers), Twitter is not a good place to build a business.

~~~
derefr
Unless you expect Twitter to sue you, "not allowed to" is pure ideology. In
reality, you make money until they notice you, then walk away.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
For a side-project, that is great. But if you are building a company where you
have multiple people looking to you to keep supplying the paycheck that pays
their mortgage, that just seems irresponsible.

Notwithstanding that, why would you want to build something that could have
the rug pulled out from under it at any point? I build stuff because I enjoy
building thing. If it wasn't working in the market and fails, it is my fault,
and I can live with that. If it is successful in the market and fails through
somebody else's actions (that I should have been cognizant of), that just
sucks.

~~~
AznHisoka
Because the alternative is to build CRUD app startups like Basecamp, with no
dependencies on any API or 3rd party data. Useful, no doubt, but a saturated
market.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Saying "CRUD application" is like saying "Java application". It's an
implementation detail and not an actual feature.

Tumblr is a CRUD application, yet it shares almost nothing with Basecamp.

Focusing on the technology does not make great products.

FWIW, I think there are a lot of potentially interesting applications that
_could_ be built on Twitter, but they've proven themselves hostile to the
idea. I don't even trust them as an OAuth provider anymore.

------
lkrubner
This might look like a failure for Flattr, but if you compare them with the
flood of micro-payment services that sprang up 5 or 6 years ago, 99% of which
vanished without a trace, then clearly it marks a kind of success for Flattr
that people are still talking about them, and still thinking about their
business model. Of all the micro-payment and/or donation sites that tried to
make something like this work, Flattr has been the most successful so far. As
a point of comparison, look at Kachingle, which so far has failed to gain any
traction, and which has attracted more derision (and lawsuits) than praise:
<http://kachingle.com/>

~~~
jacques_chester
Kachingle made a big bet on getting a business method patent and (last year)
they lost that bet. They also bet big on getting the _New York Times_ to sign
up and, when it didn't happen, took an ... unhelpful ... tone about the
subject afterwards.

~~~
lkrubner
Yes, I know. I worked with Kachingle very briefly. The amount of internal
chaos and fighting was amazing, much worse than what I've seen at other
startups.

~~~
jacques_chester
Without commenting on the internal stuff, I think Flattr's slow-growth
strategy has been much more effective. As you point out, the base rates for
failure is very high.

I've been watching since about 2008. I remember thinking that Contenture and
Tipjoy would be serious competitors.

------
babs474
I brought this up in the previous twitter api thread, but it is interesting to
get more thoughts.

Perhaps the answer is to stop using apis.

I developed a reddit extension, and when reddit cut off my api access I was
able to crowdsource a datafeed through an inbrowser extension. I'm not saying
it applies here, but with some creativity I think some apps could be
refactored to use a similar approach.

It is not a clean or easy technological solution, but it seems like the api
route isn't clean or easy politically.

Imagine if Google tried to get off the ground by using apis to crawl or if
Facebook had used approved apis to populate its initial database. They'd be
quickly killed, just like what is happening api innovators right now.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Facebook has shown a willingness to send Cease and Desist letters to people
who do this[1]. I'm sure they would be more than willing to follow up with a
lawsuit. Most sites (that I've actually looked at :) with APIs have clauses
against the automated gathering of data from their site. This would fall
directly within that.

I suppose if you are located somewhere where you feel like you are outside of
the reach of their legal arm, you might be able to get away with it.
Otherwise, you are in a legally shaky position, at best.

1\. [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-bans-browser-
plu...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-bans-browser-plugin-fgs-
and-its-developer/6955)

------
nicholassmith
Can anyone remember a few years ago, where it felt like almost twice a week
there was a new thing leveraging from Twitter in some way, doing something
useful or something novel or something completely terrible? That was great, it
created genuine value and drew more users in.

If you're a developer and you build on Facebook, or Twitter, or any other API,
you now need to be ready for them to pull the T&Cs out and ban your ass and
kill your project because damnit, we can't extract _value_ from _your_
additions that'll help us effectively monetize our customer base.

(p.s. flattr looks like a great service and I'm sure they'll find a work
around, but they should have known this was on the horizon)

------
raphinou
Is network effect so strong that Twitter can go so long at to try to destroy
its own platform? Or is it the lack of an alternative? Makes me think of
Oracle doing the same with Java by trying to extend copyright to APIs.

~~~
bobsy
Is Twitter even a platform any more? They are going out of their way to limit
and prevent 3rd party app's so they can distil down what Twitter is.. a status
update service.

Beyond using Twitter for authentication I don't see why you would want to risk
anything else on the Twitter API.

~~~
nahname
They don't share the user's email address. Kinda rules out using them for
authentication, IMO.

~~~
dtsingletary
Why? It protects the user's privacy, unlike Facebook. Ask them for their email
address after they authenticate and make it an act of volition.

------
sikhnerd
How long until twitter rolls out it's own tweet-directed payment service?
Maybe they finally found a market-tested monetization strategy.

~~~
oly
Yeah it's called kill Flattr and take their idea, oldest game in the book.

~~~
panacea
Cleaner fish <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaner_fish> sometimes become food
when they're no longer wanted.

------
jonahx
Twitter is a culture, and bringing money into the culture of favoriting and
retweeting could change it, possibly for the worse. Twitter has a right to
stop that. I'm not saying their intentions are necessarily so pure (probably
not), but it's also not out of the question.

~~~
beaumartinez
What about Favstar and its pro features? The service makes money of people's
favourites, albeit less directly.

~~~
jonahx
I think it's different. As I understand it, with favstar you can't actually
give someone money. You can give them a trophy (or other virtual rewards)
which you yourself buy with money. The key difference is that the system is
still fundamentally about nothing more than status. You make content and
receive thanks and status VS you make content and get paid for it. Innovations
to the former system are far less likely to cause a big cultural shift than a
switch to the latter system is.

------
InternalRun
Twitters war on developers continues.

------
nnnnni
Ugh, I guess Twitter wants to be the next MySpace. These companies need to
ADAPT if they want to stay relevant.

~~~
freehunter
This isn't Twitter's lack of adapting, this is them actively retracting.
They're not losing relevance through inaction. They're making decisions to
purposefully reduce extra featuresets.

------
hiddenfeatures
Interesting... They seem to crack down heavy-handed on companies that offer
payment related to twitter. Is this about user experience or is this a
harbinger of their upcoming monetization strategy?

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Same reason Apple doesn't allow in-app Bitcoin transactions, they can't
monetize it. It's anticompetative- but that's their right, in this case.

~~~
oly
Flattr was also hurt by Apple too remember...

------
iliaznk
More and more Twitter reminds me a fat and ugly beast.

------
JoelMarsh
Flattr's blog post seems to have a bit of that "not fair!" tone to it, which
they - for better or for worse - don't actually have the right to say.

I can definitely see the argument from Twitter's side, even if I don't agree
with it. But more than that: these are Twitter's terms! You can't roll in and
start arguing for benefit-of-the-doubt with the people that wrote the terms
for their own platform.

If you build your app on another company's platform to monetize their platform
and they decide you can't, you're just falling into a trap you set for
yourself. Even if it would be cooler if they allowed it.

~~~
oly
I helped write that post a bit. What is sad is that the typical story is the
big fish always push out or eat the smaller fish. We would love to offer
Twitter a 50/50 split of our fee (or better) as a rev share, but it is
doubtful they will take that offer. It seems like everyday now there is
another story like this and that is very discouraging for the open web,
something that Flattr was built to help support. If you believe in the open
web, support it.

~~~
jacques_chester
I honestly don't know if they're doing it because of some undisclosed master
plan, or just because someone is being pigheaded.

Either way, the publicity via HN should shake loose a better answer and I --
as a potential future competitor, hello, nice to meet you -- will be
interested to see which one it is.

~~~
oly
We love competition, especially US based, have you seen Copper.is and Centup
:)

~~~
jacques_chester
I'm in Australia, actually. Thanks for the names, I periodically lose track of
everyone who comes and goes.

------
k-mcgrady
I haven't used Flattr in a few years so I'm not sure exactly how this feature
works. However company's features or businesses being destroyed through
failure to read the rules/guidelines set out by the company they are working
via is becoming more and more common. If you are developing for iOS, Twitter,
Facebook etc. read the rules first. If there is anything that could be
interpreted in any way to affect you get clarification.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _I haven't used Flattr in a few years so I'm not sure exactly how this
> feature works._

Flattr is the best of the microtipping services that has so far emerged. They
removed one classic source of angst by capping the total monthly fee, so
tippers don't get a little sting of worry every time they click the but
button.

Compare fixed-rate mobile phone plans with pay-as-you-go. Even though PAYG
plans are often cheaper, many people will pay a premium simply to avoid having
to think about what they might or might not owe at the end of the month.
Flattr get that part right.

> _If there is anything that could be interpreted in any way to affect you get
> clarification._

I disagree, for two reasons. Firstly, it's easier to get forgiveness than
permission. Second, even if they're kicked off Twitter, they got exposure
during their time there and more since getting the boot.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission"

This is true in many cases (and is fine for Flattr) but in other cases I've
seen (AppGratis for example) their business is in serious trouble. If your
entire business relies on an interpretation of the rules it's better to ask
for permission because if you aren't forgiven the consequences could be
serious.

------
generalseven
Does anyone have a clear view of Twitter's Terms on commercial use and can
clarify it?

For example, Flattr and Ribbon.co have recently run into trouble, but
Chirpify, Amex and Dwolla look like they might have Twitter's blessing.

Can anyone give a good explanation of how it works?

------
unkoman
Man this was what made flattr fun to use. O well, at least I can flattr
youtube videos.

------
michaelfeathers
It's even worse for them than that. If they are violating the TOS it is a
violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 18 U.S.C. § 1030. Federal
felonies for all involved. :-/

~~~
jacques_chester
I went and had a quick look and I think you are over-stating the situation.
1030 appears to deal with either going around authorisations for USG computers
(a)(3), _or_ going around authorisations for other computers (a)(4) in order
to commit what would be in other settings ordinary crimes and misdemeanours:
intentional damage (5)(A), reckless damage (5)(B), damage and loss (5)(C) and
various species of fraud (6),(7).

I'm pretty sure Flattr's actions qualify for zero of these.

(IANAL, TINLA).

~~~
antonID
I believe he is referring to the case of Weev.

~~~
jacques_chester
Who is not a direct analogy. In law, your motives matter when determining
whether an act was criminal. The fancy term is _mens rea_ , literally "guilty
mind".

~~~
declan
Unfortunately this high school civics version of the U.S. criminal justice
system is not accurate. "Mens rea" comes from the traditional common law,
which is now increasingly divorced from actual federal criminal statutory law.
An increasingly number of federal crimes say unlawful intent may be presumed
or is even irrelevant.

Note I'm not taking a position on whether any possible TOS violations rise to
the level of a CFAA violation, or whether DOJ would care, just that waving
around terms like "mens rea" does not an actual rebuttal make.

Or, if you prefer a high school civics sur-rebuttal, "ignorance of the law is
no defense." :)

~~~
jacques_chester
I'm not American, but I do resemble one on the internet.

It does vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but strict liability is still
rare and still largely constrained to summary offences, not indictable
offences.

Regardless of whether you are in a purely code jurisdiction or purely common
law jurisdiction or some hybrid, there usually has to be additional effort by
a legislator to indicate that strict liability applies.

IANAL, TINLA.

------
ing33k
that's it , I can finally stop wasting my time on writing an app which
obviously will be pulled down due to violation of twitters terms.

------
debt
twitter doesn't make any money if you use their apis. in the same way google
wound down google reader, i think you'll see the same neglect hit the apis.
twitter needs developers focusing most of their attention on products that
make money.

------
chrisvineup
They are going to pivot to compete with Spotify next :D

------
lawl
time to get an app.net invite and abandon twitter i guess. At least for me.

------
jacques_chester
I am currently in the process of patenting a technology for a business which I
suppose will indirectly compete with Flattr.

To be quite honest, I admire how far they've gotten. Of the various
micropayment and microtipping ventures, they've been able to steadily plug
away. I gave them about as much odds of success as the many other companies
that have come and gone. (How this bodes for my own ambitions is left as an
exercise for the reader).

Naturally, I think that their model has critical economic and technical flaws
that put me in a better position. But they're in the market making money and
I'm on HN being all hand-wavy and mysterious (sorry: pre-patent secrecy).

If I could give them one piece of advice -- and it goes for everyone who's had
a crack at this -- 10% isn't enough. The incidence of the micropayment/tipping
service's share doesn't fall on the user, it falls on the websites. So you
might as well pick a sustainable rate, rather than hobble your cashflow.

~~~
pc86
Is a patent really necessary?

~~~
jacques_chester
It's neither necessary nor sufficient for success. But I believe it will deter
some competitors into choosing an easier alternative. Writing iOS apps for
sharing pictures of your lunch with people nearby, for example. And some
investors -- particularly investors in low-risk cultures like Australia --
would prefer to invest in something with IP.

I am not in a strong position to start a fence-swinging business.

I have no startup pedigree, no contacts in SV, no famous friends, no rich
parents, didn't study at MIT/Stanford/UCB or work at Google/Facebook/whoever
and I cannot move to SV for the foreseeable future.

I'll take every legal advantage I can.

And judging by the downvotes, applying for a patent is unpopular. I feel that
it's more inventive than slide-to-unlock, but folk will have to take my word
for now.

~~~
pc86
It's endemic of a broken system based on completely asinine patents on things
like (as you mentioned) slide-to-unlock, rounded rectangles, "[X that has been
around for thirty-five years] _but on a computer!_ " and as one of my clients
wanted to patent, "chat inside a Facebook page."

Applying for a patent is unpopular because (software|technology) patents are
unpopular, wrong-headed, and generally used by companies like Lodsys to extort
money from independent iOS developers who don't have the resources for legal
staff.

I don't know anything about you other than vaguely recognizing your handle
from around HN. It's possible your idea is extremely novel, even
groundbreaking, and it completely deserving of legal protection. It's very
unlikely. Chances are you're just going to waste time and money.

~~~
jacques_chester
I agree with your general position and I just want you to know I take none of
your criticism or remarks personally.

I suspect that if it ever gets a mention on HN, someone will say something
like "Jacques Chester tries to patent logins" or "Jacques Chester tries to
patent apache weblogs" or any number of things that don't at all describe what
I developed.

Part of the trouble is that patentese is hard to read. While developing the
technology to be submitted I wrote and refined what amounts to an RFC. It's a
few thousand words with about a hundred lines of pseudocode near the middle.

This in turn blew out to about ten thousand words and 5 diagrams with ~200
reference numbers.

When my first examiner's report came back he'd found and rejected two
candidates for prior art; in both cases it took me about an hour to make heads
or tails of what was described.

------
paulhauggis
I don't feel sorry for Flattr. The creator, Peter Sunde, one of the creators
of The Pirate Bay, not only facilitates the sharing of content against the
wishes of many of the owners, but charges 10% to use Flattr.

If Flattr was really all about helping others, the fee would be much less.

I still remember when he spoke at a conference and he talked about how
everything should be shared/free. It seems he's not being very honest with us.

With the amount of advertising on TPB (and traffic), I know he was making a
profit (and paying his salary).

Why should he get to profit on the backs of hard-working developers and
musicians and at the same time saying they shouldn't be able to earn a living?

~~~
aspensmonster
>If Flattr was really all about helping others, the fee would be much less.

How much less? Five percent? One percent? The only other micropayment
processor I'm aware of that has better rates than Flattr is Paypal's
micropayment service at five percent plus five cents. Given Paypal's massive
size advantage I'd say Flattr's doing well so far.

>...talked about how everything should be shared/free.

I'd think founding a startup aimed at micropayments for all kinds of artists
and other creators would indicate that Peter's ideas about distribution of art
and creator compensation are more nuanced than simply "everything should be
shared/free." He says as much in TPB AFK. He certainly doesn't believe that
copyright as it stands has any place in a digital world and Flattr seems to be
his manner of investigating ways to share content while still giving back to
creators.

>With the amount of advertising on TPB (and traffic), I know he was making a
profit (and paying his salary).

I've found no numbers on just how much has been made via adverts or what it
was spent on, though I'd imagine the costs of bandwidth for coordinating the
majority of the planet's bit torrent traffic could easily reach thousands per
month. The recently released documentary has one of the prosecutors arguing
that there were 64 unique ads on the site at any given time, each costing 500
dollars per week, coming out to about 1.7 million in revenue each year.
Gottfried says in the documentary that there were four unique ads, and that
even 110k annual revenue was bigger than they had typically gotten but a more
realistic figure. I'd love to see the actual balance sheets, though I doubt
anyone from the defense or prosecution has any to speak of.

>...at the same time saying they shouldn't be able to earn a living?

90% of flattrs that cost next to nothing for the creator to take advantage of
constitutes an incapacity to earn a living? Sounds better than what an artist
would get via itunes or an old-fashioned record deal. Of course, this is all
operating on the poor assumption that most artists would ever be able to earn
a living off their work, no matter how draconian copyright law became or how
perfectly DRM was designed and implemented.

~~~
belorn
We can get a hint about how much of the advertising went to the founders, by
comparing it with an other high alexa ranked site: Wikipedia. Their budget is
public.

At the time when Peter Sunde operated it, Wikipedia had about about 3 times
the traffic of TBP. Wikipedia also had about 10 times higher of the
operational budget (not counting Salaries and wages). We get this by looking
at the TPB advertising money as reported by the police, and comparing it to
the WP budget.

One can then either assume that Wikipedia administrators are swimming in money
and have all bought small island in the Caribbeans, or that running a services
on that scale is actually quite expensive.

Link to 2006-2007 WP budget:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/49/Wikim...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/49/Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf)
Link to TPB budget for 2006:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pirate_bay#Advertising>

~~~
gwern
> One can then either assume that Wikipedia administrators are swimming in
> money and have all bought small island in the Caribbeans, or that running a
> services on that scale is actually quite expensive.

Running services on the WMF may be quite expensive but that tells us little
about TPB - the WMF is not really comparable. They're running hundreds of
projects, not just the English Wikipedia; their staff are living in one of the
most expensive places in the world, San Francisco; they're developing &
supporting an infrastructure much more complicated than 'upload a torrent file
and a textual description box', due to editing pages by all sorts of users
with different privilege levels and rich media and exploiting HTML5 and
working with new MediaWiki extensions like Semantic and of course the truly
enormous size of Commons' media database of millions of photos and images and
videos; they work under many more legal pressures than TPB (which takes joy at
thumbing their nose at any legal issues); coordinate dozens of chapter
organizations worldwide (some with significant amounts of revenue like the de
chapter); and do other things like the floating Wikimania conference or the
DVD encylopedias aimed at Africa or surveys or editor-retention projects or
third-world article writing contests etc.

What TPB does is impressive in its own way, but simply is not on the same
scale of complexity or variety.

~~~
belorn
While some of that is true, I am talking 2006.

At that time, Semantic was developed and funded by Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology, Commons was just a year old and was of 1/16 of todays size. I am
also not sure how many chapter organizations they had, or if the work towards
any DVD encylopedias was in the works then.

I also intentionally excluded travel for the above calculations.

An other telling part can be seen in the Wikimeda fundation 2006 budget under
the heading of "Internet hosting". To my understanding, that number is
exclusive bandwidth costs.

