Re:Twitterrific Has Been Discontinued
by schnebbau on Thursday January 19, 2023 @06:41PM
(#34447244)
Erm, that isn't how the real world works. I'm not entering into an agreement with Twitter when I pay for a Twitterific subscription, I'm entering into an agreement with Twitterific. They are responsible for fulfilling the subscription for which I am paying, not Twitter. If they are unable to then it doesn't matter why, they have still broken the agreement. This is simple business.
The developer should cover for the actions of Twitter because they decided to build their business on top of Twitter, fully reliant on Twitter's goodwill around API access. They are the one who took on that risk, and it's irresponsible and unethical to push the consequences of that risk onto their own customers.
Their average customer doesn't know or care about API platforms. They just want to access Twitter via a nice, premium app they paid for. If they can no longer do that, they deserve a refund of the remaining unused value of their subscription.
The developer gets the upside of building a successful business and takes the downside of making business decisions that turn out to be misguided, no?
To put it another way - if the shareholders had had a nine-figure exit, would they have planned on sharing that with their customers?
But that's not a response to my comment. I'm asking why the developer, who has expenses of his own, should cover for the actions of Twitter. In the absence of an explicit promise related to this, the customer was taking a risk that Twitter would do something like this. There is no good argument that either party should have to cover for Twitter's actions.