Twitter is now limiting third-party apps
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Elon Musk cutting off all third-party Twitter apps didn't just kill developers' income completely, it left them facing the need to refund thousands of annual subscriptions. You might be able to help.
In January 2023, Musk effectively shut down all Twitter apps but his own. Right away, Sean Heber from The Icon Factory, maker of Twitterific, pointed out the subscriptions problem.
"[If] you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple," he wrote in a blog post. "The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets - not Twitter's and not Apple's."
"To put it simply," continued Heber, "thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours."
Now, as noted by Daring Fireball, both Twitterific and Tweetbot have updated their apps to include an option for subscribers to decline the refund.
Apple cancelled all subscriptions when the apps were removed from the App Store. But users who had a current subscription at the time, can still get the latest update and tap the new "I Don't Need a Refund" button.
While Musk ultimately cut off the third-party apps with no notice, they did experience periods of being unable to access Twitter in the weeks before hand. Tweetbot developer Tapbots said at the time that as a result, it was speeding up development of its Mastodon app, Ivory.
