Monday’s top tech news: Twitter’s third-party client ban seems like no accident

Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergePlus new rumors about the fifth Galaxy Fold. Continue reading…

Monday’s top tech news: Twitter’s third-party client ban seems like no accident

Although Twitter is yet to issue an official statement on why most major third-party clients broke last week, it increasingly seems as though the outage is intentional. The Information reported over the weekend that the outage is no accident, meaning Twitter has effectively just kneecapped several apps designed to help people use its service without having the decency to let their developers know. I think John Gruber says it best when he calls this behavior “absurdly disrespectful.

ICYMI, my colleague Alex Heath wrote up an interesting analysis piece about who in the world could actually be brought in to lead Twitter if and when Elon Musk steps down as CEO.

In gadget news, Samsung is reportedly developing a new hinge design for its fifth-generation Galaxy Fold device (due to be announced later this summer) that could decrease its visible screen crease when unfolded. I’m generally of the opinion that display creases aren’t particularly visible when you’re actually using existing foldables, but making them less visible should help the devices feel more premium.

For now, here’s a silly tweet to start your day.

Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Monday, January 16th, 2023.

Microsoft’s Activision deal faces EU scrutiny.

Microsoft is reportedly likely to face objections from the European Commission to its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision. Reuters reports that the European Commission is preparing a statement of objections to the deal, which will be sent to Microsoft in the coming weeks. Microsoft may be forced to offer more concessions to the EU, after it tried to ease concerns with a 10-year deal offer for Call of Duty to Sony and an agreement with Nintendo.