After the acquisition of start-up Smyte, Twitter immediately shut down the API of the service. Customers used Smyte to detect fraud and abuse through machine learning and received a phone call just in advance that the service would go offline.
ZenDesk, GoFundMe and IndieGogo were among others Smyte customers, reports Techcrunch. Some of the customers had contracts to purchase the service for another three years, but Twitter called customers after the acquisition and shut down the API soon after. As a result, affected customers are now without the tool’s fraud and abuse detection.
In some cases, companies, such as Javascript package manager npm, received a phone call at 6 a.m. that Twitter would shut down the service, only to do so half an hour later. As a result, new users were temporarily unable to register, says the co-founder of npm on Twitter. Customers find it extra painful, because Smyte used the slogan ‘trust and safety as a service’, ‘trust and safety as a service’.
Twitter wants better tackle online abuse with Smyte’s expertise on his social network. The companies announced the acquisition on Thursday.