TechCrunch:

It’s hard to be a fan of Twitter right now. The company is sticking up for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, when nearly all other platforms have given him the boot, it’s overrun with bots, and now it’s breaking users’ favorite third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific by shutting off APIs these apps relied on. Worse still, is that Twitter isn’t taking full responsibility for its decisions.

This whole write-up says it better than I can.

This section in particular:

The company’s email also says it hopes to eventually learn “why people hire 3rd party clients over our own apps."

Its own apps?

Oh, you mean like TweetDeck, the app Twitter acquired then shut down on Android, iPhone and Windows? The one it generally acted like it forgot it owned? Or maybe you mean Twitter for Mac (previously Tweetie, before its acquisition), the app it shut down this year, telling Mac users to just use the web instead? Or maybe you mean the nearly full slate of TV apps that Twitter decided no longer needed to exist?

And Twitter wonders why users don’t want to use its own clients?

Perhaps, users want a consistent experience — one that doesn’t involve a million inconsequential product changes like turning stars to hearts or changing the character counter to a circle. Maybe they appreciate the fact that the third parties seem to understand what Twitter is better than Twitter itself does: Twitter has always been about a real-time stream of information. It’s not meant to be another Facebook-style algorithmic News Feed. The third-party clients respect that. Twitter does not.

I will continue — even in its restricted form — to use Tweetbot over anything officially Twitter.

Yet, at the same time, I recognize a countdown clock is on for my use of Twitter as a platform.

It’s not the site I loved. It’s not the service I was obsessed with. It’s not where I made friends, it’s not where I met my wife. Not anymore.

Keep chasing being Facebook, Jack. I’ll leave you too.