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Sarah Gooding

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.

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.

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20 responses to “Twitter Suspends WordPress.com’s Access to Twitter API, Breaking Jetpack Social Sharing”

  1. Musk is a disaster. If it were not for the politicians and journalists who still use it, I would be gone. I do have a Mastodon account, but have not really acclimated to it completely. Mr. Musk keeps giving me more reasons to make the effort. . . .

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  2. Didn’t Twitter announce some time ago that they were taking away free API for everyone? Is this really a surprise? I know I was concerned about the impact this might have on “social walls.”

    I also remembering thinking what? Is the new overlord TRYING to burn it down?

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  5. So Jetpack was charging for access to Twitter’s API which they were getting for free. If API access is valuable enough for people to pay Jetpack some piece of $120-$180/year for it, why shouldn’t Twitter monetize it a bit too? Seems like a reasonable business decision. Or at least a defensible one.

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    • Fair point. I don’t pay for either, and if the free Twitter feed goes away, so be it—I go looking for what I want as a reader, and my groups are small enough that we have neither budget nor interest in ongoing payments.

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    • I’d say Jetpack was charging for their ability to integrate Twitter’s API into their offering and make it work for website owners and/or developers. Most people wouldn’t know what to do with the free API.

      And I tend to think that the resulting posts, traffic and interaction resulting from tools like Jetpack’s would help Twitter – not take anything away from them.

      My point was more like…. Jetpack didn’t see this coming?

      That being said, even devs willing to pay were cut off. https://mashable.com/article/twitter-cuts-off-api-access-apps

      Apparently there’s a LOT of buzz about this – and @TwitterDev is trying to do damage control – including promoting new Twitter API Free or Basic plans.

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    • Jetpack can be used for free and the free version allows connection to twitter so no they were not charging for access to twitter’s api while getting it for free. Twitter however was getting a lot of free content from WordPress users.

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    • Bullies press to see how far they can go; enough push-back, and they back down.
      Automattic must have come to terms with Twitter? Or the negative press was not worth it? Most important, the folks who run small wordpress.com sites will not be shut out—at least not now.

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  7. Twitter is so amazing. How do they do it? You type in some text and someone else can read it. I’m really into celebrities, so I’m hoping, one day they’ll retweet one of my tweets and I’ll be famous too.

    Elon Musk is a genius. He invented electric cars, Twitter, flamethrowers and rockets. Where would we be without him? Elon in 2024. All the way. Replace the interstate highway system with hyperloop when Teslas (and pigs) fly.

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  8. So people can’t click a share button? When your post gets published, hit the share button. You don’t need an automatic thing.

    Things cost money, running Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/WordPress/etc… costs money to run. Yeah, let’s blame Musk, the end of the world is here. Let’s all move to Mastodon.

    All the instances of Mastodon, I can’t remember seeing any advertising. There are three ways to fund things: (1) ask for donations (2) advertising (3) charge for a pro version. Most wp plugins do 3 by the way.

    Yoast SEO does pro, others do freemius thing.

    Advertising has gone down for years. Most people won’t even donate.

    You do not need JetPack publishing, I personally don’t use it. I use WP to Twitter. I am debating removing it from my sites.

    Twitter is a private company now and can set their own rules. Musk is not a bully.

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      • Agreed; I don’t pay for any of these automatic services, my groups’ budgets do not allow for much if any of that. I have noticed, however, that clicking the Twitter share button on certain articles does not actually work; upon logging into Twitter, the usual box with link to share does not pop up, rather, I have to copy and paste the URL. It is not on every site, and it started after Musk took over. It could be sites deleting their Twitter account or choosing not to link actively, or it could be a limit from Twitter itself; I’m not sure, I just find it confusing and minorly annoying.

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  10. I noticed my post wasn’t automatically shared on Twitter yesterday. Infact, the Twitter connect was also broken. But I was able to share the post with my Twitter readers manually using the social shares.

    While this could be a glitch, since no announcement was made, the new Twitter boss can do anything anytime so it could also be possible the block was from Twitter. And as always, they owe no apology to any of us.

    Either ways, Twitter could be loosing traffic somehow if they continue this way.

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  11. Got notifications today that my Twitter Apps which were setup for the WP Twitter Auto Publish plugin have been suspended.
    The details from Twitter are very confusing and trying to create new Apps and Projects through the Twitter Developer Dashboard is doing my head in.
    Think I’m going to wait and see what happens as right now trying to figure out how to fix things is doing my head in.

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  12. Seems like my JetPack social connection to Facebook no longer works as well (although it is connected). My posts are not uploading to them anymore.

    Trying to share content with these social media sites seems to always wind up in nothing but aggravation…

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