Twitter Suspends WordPress.com’s Access to Twitter API, Breaking Jetpack Social Sharing

Twitter suspended WordPress.com’s access to the Twitter API without notice yesterday. Representatives at WordPress.com do not know why their access is currently blocked but are working to regain it.

Our access to the Twitter API is currently blocked. As a result, Jetpack Social is temporarily unable to automatically share your posts directly from https://t.co/eRvNKWaolr to Twitter. We have reached out to Twitter for more information on how to get unblocked.
— WordPress.com (@wordpressdotcom) April 4, 2023

The API enables features like Jetpack Social’s Twitter connection. Users who rely on this Jetpack module to auto-tweet their published posts will see errors in the dashboard until this issue is resolved.

WordPress.com advised that reconnecting will not work at this time, nor will trying to establish a new connection. Connections to other social networks are still operational.

On large publishing sites some authors may not be aware that the auto-tweet functionality is broken. For the time being, the solution is to manually tweet published posts.

Jetpack users reported the issue in the plugin’s support forums 10 hours ago, as some of them are Jetpack Social paid subscribers. In October 2022, Jetpack announced a paid plan for its Social plugin and limited the free version to 30 social shares per month, a controversial monetization decision that left many users in search of alternatives.

Several users asked if refunds will be coming their way if the fix for the issue is not forthcoming, as auto-sharing to Facebook and Twitter is one of the main reasons customers subscribe to the service.

“We are aware of issue and are looking into it with Twitter, but at this stage we don’t know when it will be fixed,” a Jetpack support representative responded to customers. “We’re working with Twitter to find the best solution possible.”

Twitter launched its new API access tiers on March 29, 2023. Access to the Enterprise tier requires an application process. Over the next 30 days Twitter is deprecating its previous access tiers and is encouraging developers to migrate to the new tiers as soon as possible to avoid disruption.