Ending our Twitter integration
After finally losing Twitter API access last month as part of their latest policy changes, we’ve officially removed our cross-posting integration with Twitter.
While we would love to continue supporting this feature for all the writers who use it, ultimately we’re glad to cut ties with a platform that has become unreliable in many ways under its new ownership.
Twitter Changes
Since changing ownership in November, we’ve watched Twitter transform quickly and often whimsically. We trudged through new bugs and instability, and alerted others when they started censoring alternatives like Mastodon and Substack. We watched advertisers, news organizations, and everyday people flee to other social networks like the fediverse and Bluesky, as new conversations about decentralizing social media started.
Then in February, Twitter announced new pricing changes to their API:
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵
With this announcement, in light of the platform’s unreliability, anti-competitive tactics, and disregard for its users and developers, we decided we’d remove our Twitter integration. In mid-May, Twitter finally revoked our access to their API, and today we’ve officially removed support from Write.as.
Going Forward
With this change, you’ll no longer be able to connect your Twitter account, or cross-post to any previously-connected account from Write.as. Instead, writers can still manually copy and paste any published post URL into a tweet.
We really try not to remove useful features from our platform, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience this causes. However, we’ll continue building our platform (and the software underneath, WriteFreely) toward our long-term mission of advancing the open web, outside of siloed social networks that are easily bought and sold.
As we have for years, we continue to believe that the future of writing, publishing, and socializing online is in small and interoperable communities. It’s why we added support for ActivityPub and the fediverse back in 2018, and continue supporting the ecosystem to this day.
If you’re looking for a new social space to rebuild and find your community, we’d highly encourage trying the fediverse. Readers there can directly follow your blog and interact with it — and soon, you’ll also be able to receive replies on your blog posts directly from the fediverse.
If you prefer Twitter-style microblogging, our Mastodon instance, Writing Exchange, remains open to Write.as Pro subscribers — even if your subscription ends. Just visit your Blogs page as a subscriber to learn more.
Following Us
Going forward, the best place to follow us is on the fediverse: @write_as@writing.exchange. We’ll continue sharing important updates and information there. We’re also on Bluesky for jokes and little announcements.
Otherwise, as of March, we stopped monitoring our Twitter account. It’ll remain online, but we won’t post any critical updates, so we don’t suggest following it anymore.
Have any thoughts? Let us know on Remark.as: Discuss...