
IFTTT forced to remove Twitter triggers to comply with new API policies - hornokplease
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/09/20/ifttt-removes-twitter-triggers-comply-new-api-policies/
======
dm8
Dick Costolo recently spoke about Twitter as a platform on Charlie Rose show -
"The future of Twitter is that we'll have a true platform, not just an API
that allows developers to create an alternate Twitter experience, but an API
that allows third parties to build on top of Twitter in a way that creates
accretive value for the user, much how Amazon allowed third-party merchants to
build into Amazon."

He made it abundantly clear that Twitter doesn't want its API to be used for
alternative twitter clients. IFTTT does not necessarily create alternative
twitter consumption client but it can be used to accomplish that.

On a side note (and it may not be popular with HN community); so far we have
seen API used (majority of times) for alternative twitter consumption clients.
May be with these API changes, we might see more innovation using Twitter as a
"platform"? Rather than people trying to create alternative clients.

~~~
ricardobeat
Well, IFTT's twitter hooks were exactly that kind of innovation, and it was
just shot dead. How is anyone going to use it as a platform if you can't even
read data from it?

~~~
jrockway
The same way we read everything without an API, Pinky. Screen scraping.

~~~
SeanDav
screen scraping = break ToS = get arrested by Feds.

It is the new world kids and we all better break out our reinforced tin foil
hats.

~~~
makmanalp
Really? Would you get arrested by feds? Are you really breaking any federal
laws? Isn't denying you access all they can do to you?

~~~
SeanDav
Well, actually breaking a site's ToS and benefiting materially from it is now
considered a Federal crime. Aaron Swartz is being charged by the Feds for just
that. It didn't involve screen scraping but use of a bot to download data,
even though he was entitled to download that data normally, just not using a
bot.

Scary stuff.

~~~
thirsteh
This is not true. Aaron Swartz is being charged for distributing non-free
content that he happened to obtain that way. You make it sound like he's being
charged with a felony for scraping free content.

~~~
SeanDav
Actually I am correct.

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/aaron-swartz-
felony...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/aaron-swartz-felony/)

Some extracts:

Like last year’s original grand jury indictment on four felony counts, (.pdf)
the superseding indictment (.pdf) unveiled Thursday accuses Swartz of evading
MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading millions
of documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable,
digitized copies of academic journals that are normally inaccessible to the
public.

In essence, many of the charges stem from Swartz allegedly breaching the terms
of service agreement for those using the research service.

The case tests the reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed
in 1984 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed
computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer
functionality.

The government, however, has interpreted the anti-hacking provisions to
include activities such as violating a website’s terms of service or a
company’s computer usage policy

~~~
makmanalp
Hmm, since the case hasn't been concluded yet, does that mean that that is a
valid thing to charge a person with?

Also, the part you quoted ends with:

> "The government, however, has interpreted the anti-hacking provisions to
> include activities such as violating a website’s terms of service or a
> company’s computer usage policy, a position a federal appeals court in April
> said means “millions of unsuspecting individuals would find that they are
> engaging in criminal conduct.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in
> limiting reach of the CFAA, said that violations of employee contract
> agreements and websites’ terms of service were better left to civil
> lawsuits."

Also of interest:

> The rulings by the 9th Circuit cover the West, and not Massachusetts,
> meaning they are not binding in Swartz’ prosecution. The Obama
> administration has declined to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

------
Smudge
This feels very counter to Twitter's claimed intent in rolling out the new
policies.

IFTTT is in no way trying compete as a Twitter client, and, especially in the
case where I'm trying to archive _my own Tweets,_ the service only enhances my
Twitter experience.

Twitter's throwing a lot away in the name of squeezing more value out of its
assets.

~~~
debacle
If the ship's going down, you start throwing everything away you can to keep
it afloat.

~~~
tylermenezes
Twitter just moved into a new office, has been acquiring companies (remember,
they're what drove Instagram's price up), and you really think they're
secretly cash-strapped or something?

~~~
debacle
No definitely not, but the problem is that the clock is ticking and I think
the FB IPO showed them what can happen when the right pieces aren't in place
at the time of IPO.

No one is going to argue that Twitter has a technological advantage - their
service is incredibly simple and could probably be completely replicated by a
small team in six months to a year. Moreso than Facebook, they are relying on
the network effect but the also monetize _less_ than Facebook, so who really
knows if they're ever going to be profitable?

------
willidiots
I've been using IFTTT to syndicate my Twitter posts to App.net. Guess now I'll
have to default to App.net and syndicate to Twitter instead. Say goodbye to my
ad revenue, Twitter.

~~~
graue
For those who didn't shell out for App.net, you can also syndicate to Twitter
from the completely open rstat.us, which also (for now) allows you to sign in
with your Twitter account, so it takes five seconds to set up.
<https://rstat.us>

No personal connection to rstat.us, just think it's a cool remedy for
Twitter's new iron-fist policies.

------
mratzloff
Their investors obviously got tired of waiting for a return. When that happens
at any VC-backed company they start ratcheting up the pressure on the CEO and
executive team. And if they don't start generating a return quickly enough,
they put their own guy in place. So co-founder Evan Williams moved on from his
CEO position in late 2010 and the new leadership purged the old guard. Dick
Costolo took over.

Either it took 2 years for his profit strategy to come together or the
pressure started ratcheting up on him, too. After all, investors have sunk a
silly amount of money into Twitter; they expect a return.

Either way, I wouldn't want to work at Twitter right now...

------
jwilliams
This is the full email from IFTTT <http://pastebin.com/uttmebvT>

Very diplomatic. I wouldn't have minded a "this sucks for you & us" in there.

------
dreamdu5t
Twitter's handling of their API closes the door on a future where there can be
any expectation of building your service on-top of another.

We should stop building apps on-top of walled custom APIs and go back to using
HTTP as an API.

------
nathancahill
Are you kidding me?! Why would Twitter do this? Picture Twitter as a tree
trunk of data. There are branches and leaves that grow off the trunk, branches
like IFTTT and other amazing services. But once you cut off the leaves, then
the branches, only the trunk is left. A dead, dead trunk. A couple months ago
there wasn't an alternative to Twitter. Now there is. I'm switching to App.net
tonight.

------
state
I started to think of Twitter in between SMS and E-mail as I think a lot of
people did. To me Twitter is more of a protocol or even a modality than a
platform. That's the brilliance of it: it's a speed and length of
communication that feels very natural. I have no objections to these rules in
terms of Twitter growing as a company. I think there are a lot of applications
that can be built aside from clients and it makes sense for them to steer
people in that direction.

As a user, however, I feel attached to the idea that data and application are
separate. I would like to think that I own my Tweets, but most of all I just
want to _feel_ like I own my tweets — like I can _do_ whatever I want with
them and see them however I want. A short, passive message that I put out in
to the world is a great thing and it seems unlikely that a single company can
own that idea.

------
ColinWright
See also the discussion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550601>

------
akkartik
Just yesterday I saw someone saying how twitter's API policies didn't bother
him: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4545823>. Now they do.

~~~
flexxaeon
I thought of that post too when I saw the news, and couldn't help but wonder
"if this triggered that"

------
albertsun
IFTTT seems like a perfect case for something that should be an open source
project that anyone can install and run on their own servers, not as a
centralized service, specifically to prevent things like this. Then anyone
could contribute recipes and API clients and there's no central point of
failure for them to be all removed in one go.

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
Yes, and when APIs fail: P2P screenscraping. Regardless of its legality, as
some other commenters here have brought up, Twitter can't stop distributed
reading and storing without blocking lots of IP addresses.

~~~
slig
> Twitter can't stop distributed reading and storing without blocking lots of
> IP addresses.

Ha, twitter can't even block @mention spam from fresh accounts using very
spammy words.

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
Well then, it's time for a 3rd-party Twitter search engine, using a P2P-based
scraper, with no regard for API rules or ToS. In the long term, what's more
important: Twitter's bottom line, or content not being thrown down the memory
hole?

~~~
slig
It's easier to just jump the ship. Why care so much for a service that doesn't
give a shit to us ('us' being app developers, early adopters, etc).

They have their target audience (people following celebrities) guaranteed for
now. We're just a typical pain in the ass nerds.

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
Yes, but isn't it worth capturing that content, and in doing so, their users?
The search engine I am suggesting could easily transition to being the next
Twitter. We grab the content, their users perform searches, and then the users
migrate when they see that they can not only search every tweet ever made
(since we began indexing) but also add to the database directly (kind of like
Google having both a search box and an "add your own URL" box on the main
page).

~~~
slig
I'd guess that the vast majority of twitter users don't know anything about
this API shenanigans, blocking 3rd party clients and all this bullshit. They
don't know and they don't care.

As long as Justin Bieber and other celebrities continue to post, users will be
there.

Also, the typical tweet doesn't make sense a couple of hours/days after being
posted. I'm not sure if there's such interest in searching for old stuff.

------
barredo
What about buffer and twitterfeed? Will they be able to proceed?

~~~
fold
Posting to twitter via ifttt is not affected, just reading from twitter.

------
samikc
People at Twitter must realize that when developers talk about your API's tos
rather than the API, you must have broken something. It reminds me Facebook
episode of network feed and privacy. At the end of it, Mark understood what
the users were talking about and took action to correct it.

The problem seems like an issue of making profit by showing promotional
tweets, which will not happen in the clients. It, to me, looks like the
problem of management which could not come up with better revenue model.

------
egfx
Ok, I created the product <http://2FB.me> (ReTweet 2 Facebook) months ago and
I read the same policy some weeks ago and didn't read it to mean this at all.
2FB.me makes share links for tweets enhancing & augmenting the experience. It
doesn't clone any portion of Twitter. I think the same can be said for IFTTT?

------
tonetheman
Meh. twitter is wrong in this case. And so starts the reputation of being an
asshat company. Nothing to see here move along.

------
nicholassmith
Well, according to Dick Costolo it has _nothing_ to do with the API changes:
<https://twitter.com/dickc/status/248947914582405120> but I'm struggling to
imagine IFTTT killing a really useful feature for no reason.

------
onetwothreefour
Congrats to IFTTT for getting themselves a crap load of coverage dishonestly!
Yay!

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/ifttt-has-actually-been-
in-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/ifttt-has-actually-been-in-violation-
of-twitters-api-for-months-todays-move-unrelated-to-1-1/)

~~~
Karunamon
There's no proof that it's dishonest - it's possible that either legal or
twitter themselves tapped them on the shoulder and said they should knock it
off.

Ignorance before malice.

------
joebadmo
Add to the list for the need for a decentralized, distributed platform with no
one party in control of our information and publishing. I, for one, am really
looking forward to what the <http://tent.io/> guys come out with.

------
Shank
I used this functionality to track updates on software from companies/groups
that don't do RSS. They do/did Twitter. I also got downtime alerts from
Pingdom via Twitter.

I'm starting to see this as less and less of a platform I can depend on.

------
munimkazia
I don't get it. IFTTT complies with the new API policies. Infact, cool stuff
like IFTTT is exactly what twitter should be looking for as platform apps
which use their API creatively.

------
TomMasz
It's Twitter's way or the highway. From clients to value-added services, if
Twitter doesn't own it, it's dead or soon will be. Fun while it lasted, I
guess.

------
philip1209
I am disappointed that I cannot post tweets to Facebook with this any more.
However, using twitterfeed to post them should be fairly straightforward . . .

~~~
nslater
You can do that from within Twitter directly.

------
gizzlon
Bah, the "foo mentioned you on twitter.." SMS' kept me in the loop.. Now I
probably won't even notice :(

------
mehdim
This is why we need API neutrality <http://api500.com/>

------
ThaddeusQuay2
What about Zapier? Doesn't it provide the same Twitter connectivity as IFTTT
did? I don't use either, but, from casual inspection a while back, my
impression was that they are similar enough in that regard.

