It’s stressful to think about it, but so much of our digital lives exist precariously. With a few taps of the keyboard, Microsoft could stop us from accessing our documents, Google could deny us access to our emails, and Facebook could disconnect us from our friends.
If you’re thinking “they’d never do that”, recent events suggests it’s far from a remote possibility – just ask power users of Twitter and the social news site Reddit.
In January, just weeks after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was finalised, users of a number of third-party Twitter clients including Tweetbot, Echofon, Birdie and Twitterific, suddenly found themselves unable to log in. And it wasn’t a bug in the system.
After several days of uncertainty, it emerged that the new proprietor had decided to restrict access to the Twitter API, the technical means by which apps made by outsiders talk to the company’s servers. In an