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While it's quite possible to build an app that way, using scraping. The danger is that users of that app will get suspended from Twitter (users have explicitly

While it's quite possible to build an app that way, using scraping. The danger is that users of that app will get suspended from Twitter (users have explicitly agreed not to scrape), once thats happened to a couple of users, thats the end of your app. Obviously you can try to obscure that you are scraping, but that is difficult to get right and there is no way back once you get it wrong.

mrtksn 4y ago
On Apple devices that wouldn’t be an issue because you you can load the Twitter Web interface into a real Safari and get the markup from there for processing. Twitter can try things like CAPTCHA but this will degrade the experience for all Twitter users and you can simply delegate this CAPTCHA to your user to solve anyway.
- samwillis 4y ago
  While for reading that works, there is an easy why via posting to spot people use that app. They can change at any moment the input names so that when posting a tweet you are exposing that you are using the scrapping client.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Remember that you are loading full Twitter website in the background. You will use their original interface to post Tweets.
    - majewsky 4y ago
      Yes, but the app is not a human and will likely interact with the website in a more predictable (and thus, detectable) way than the human itself would.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        But you also have a human using the app, you can transfer the interactions with your app to the Twitter's Web UI.
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  Apple wouldn't permit such an app in the store so it's a moot point.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Why do you think that Apple wouldn't permit it on AppStore?
  - sumeno 4y ago
    There are already apps like this on the app store
alkonaut 4y ago
If something is built as a browser extension and the requests it sends look like the browser would normally then it must be hard to detect. The requirement for the extension/plug-in has to be that: it looks like someone uses Twitter normally.

mrtksn 4y ago

On Apple devices that wouldn’t be an issue because you you can load the Twitter Web interface into a real Safari and get the markup from there for processing. Twitter can try things like CAPTCHA but this will degrade the experience for all Twitter users and you can simply delegate this CAPTCHA to your user to solve anyway.

samwillis 4y ago
While for reading that works, there is an easy why via posting to spot people use that app. They can change at any moment the input names so that when posting a tweet you are exposing that you are using the scrapping client.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Remember that you are loading full Twitter website in the background. You will use their original interface to post Tweets.
  - majewsky 4y ago
    Yes, but the app is not a human and will likely interact with the website in a more predictable (and thus, detectable) way than the human itself would.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      But you also have a human using the app, you can transfer the interactions with your app to the Twitter's Web UI.
Mindwipe 4y ago
Apple wouldn't permit such an app in the store so it's a moot point.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Why do you think that Apple wouldn't permit it on AppStore?
- sumeno 4y ago
  There are already apps like this on the app store

alkonaut 4y ago

If something is built as a browser extension and the requests it sends look like the browser would normally then it must be hard to detect. The requirement for the extension/plug-in has to be that: it looks like someone uses Twitter normally.