I'm taking it as you've noted, a "strongly-worded request". They are just pushing Twitter to enforce their own TOS immediately or face actual, legal consequence

I'm taking it as you've noted, a "strongly-worded request". They are just pushing Twitter to enforce their own TOS immediately or face actual, legal consequences. Which honestly, seems fair. It's like YouTube. Google refuses to take ownership of any content provided by their site -- even though in that case they do host it -- as they are merely a "provider". And even then, they must enforce a DMCA mechanism or face the consequences. Otherwise they would have been sued into obscurity.