Group DM support via the APIs?

[voobr]

Hello. I’m wondering if the recently-announced group DM feature will be accessible via the APIs any time soon. Looking forward to it.

Voobr

[andypiper]

Hi there! we were excited to provide support around the video API today

At the present time we don’t have anything to announce on access to the group DM feature via an API. This is a brand new feature for us and right now we can’t provide any timeline for API support.

Be sure to watch the @twitterapi handle and the announcements forum here if this changes in the future!

[voobr]

Thanks for the reply, Andy. I hope this feature will eventually make it into the API.

Voobr

[richardhyland]

Won’t the non availability through the api actually break DMS though. If someone is using DMS through the api. What happens if they get a group DM. Can they see it. Can they reply to it.

If they reply from another non Twitter app will it go to the group. I can understand many things not coming quickly to the api but this one sounds like it could actually break the feature

[richardhyland]

So it looks like group DMs don’t show in either streaming or REST APIs at all so apps or users relying on apps using DMs will have no knowledge of them

[andypiper]

This is true at the moment, however depending on your notification settings you will see an email if you are added to a group DM conversation. Group DMs are accessible in the Twitter website, TweetDeck, and the Android and iOS clients from Twitter. Again, stay tuned for future updates in terms of the API.

[richardhyland]

Thanks for the reply Andy. Sounds promising that it’ll come to the API too as it would be shame for people to miss out of DMs because they don’t see them in their app of choice

[dekisu]

I’m going to go ahead and ask something dumb. Here goes nothing:

Will I get banned if I implement group DMs in my client using the same method as the official clients?

[andypiper]

using the same method as the official clients

The API endpoints for Group DM are not yet available to third-party clients, so you wouldn’t be able to do this at the moment (and would certainly not be following the Developer Policy and TOS).

[ePirat]

Indeed it would be a interesting thing to have this clarified. Maybe I overlooked it but I couldn’t find any section in the TOS/Dev Policy that explicitly says anything about this.

[andypiper]

I would interpret section 2 of the Developer Agreement (specifically the section on reverse engineering) to cover the use of undocumented / non-public API endpoints.

[dekisu]

Even if the developer agreement wasn’t there, the limitation is in the API endpoints (like andypiper said) and there’s nothing we can do about that other than waiting very patiently.

(Also, general reminder that twitter is relatively unique in this level of openness, with an extensive, well documented and public API. And most competing services in the group conversation area have awful closed protocols. Some of them even decided to get rid of the “open” way to access it. So, if anything, I’m thankful that this is a “not yet”)

[ePirat]

Would this section also affect reverse engineering for security research? From my experience Twitter accepts reports of security problems even if the affected endpoint is a private one, without consequences for the researcher. (It might be good to clarify this somewhere as I wasn’t sure about it, so when I reported my issue I even made a new Twitter account just for this purpouse, as the report form requires to enter one)

[JamRobWomm]

Our application allows financial services firms to utilize Twitter for business purposes. The retrieval and ability to retain communications is a requirement of government regulating agencies such as FINRA/SEC.

I just wanted to throw another nod for this data to be available via API has our financial services firms may not allow their financial professionals to utilize direct messaging entirely since group messaging is so tightly integrated with direct messaging.

Thanks for listening.

[andypiper]

We hear ya - we just do not have any news right now about plans for rolling this out as an API for more widespread use. Thanks for the input!

[gnownad]

Like @JamRobWomm, we have large Enterprise customers who are regulated under various agencies that they have to reply to all questions asked of them (specifically healthcare and financial industries). If we’re not able to get visibility of group DMs this is an area of risk.

Would you be able to work with Twitter certified partners on this? We’d love to talk.

Thanks!

[evilhackerdude]

@andypiper Hey, it’s been a while since the last message in this thread so I thought I’d ask again.

Any news on Group DM support being made part of the public API?

Thank you.

[andypiper]

No, I’m afraid this is not something that we’ve currently prioritised - finishing up testing on the removal of the 140 char limit for DMs, but nothing to share on group DM at this time.

[evilhackerdude]

Bummer, but thanks for getting back so quickly!

[bazzie666]

Any news on this?