Actually, this was a major point of API failure when I last tried to use it. Did you know that, with the current API, there's no way to retrieve the replies to a tweet? This makes it impossible to build tools that, say, allow you to visualize a tweet thread, because you simply can't fetch the thread.

So I'll say that, as a casual, social, and informational user of Twitter (i.e. not business, not adtech, not academia), this announcement gives me a little hope that we might see a resurgence in 3rd party apps that provide more powerful ways of interfacing with Twitter. At least, that's my hope, maybe I'm naive that they'd really allow this.

it is possible -- it unfortunately happens to be part of my job description to do so

one of the sibling comments basically has it right. you can build it from the bottom up (where "bottom" is the deepest tweet in the thread you know about, one way or another).

let me tell you though, i am _very_ excited for this new API, because there is some absolutely horrible code i will be able to delete as a result of it

My crusty old version of Tweetbot has been doing that for years...? Maybe not perfectly for tweets with hundreds of replies, but well enough.

It's been like that at least since 2013.

...

;)

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind them touching on the developers relations they want to build, but no company of their size will admit to wrongdoing in the past.

Also words aren't worth anything unless they come in a legally binding contract that can't change on a whim.