Would it be illegal to embed tweets not using Twitter's API?

Question

I'm trying to add a Twitter Timeline to my website.

Instead of using the Twitter API,

What if I just get the HTML of that Twitter page with a HttpWebRequest, and then parse and implement it with additional CSS and HTML the way I like?

    string strResult;
    WebResponse objResponse;
    WebRequest objRequest =HttpWebRequest.Create("https://www.twitter.com/<username>");
    objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse();

    using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(objResponse.GetResponseStream()))
    {
        strResult = sr.ReadToEnd();
        sr.Close();
    }

The code above gets the HTML when you view the source of a page.

Would it be illegal to use Twitter's content in that way?

And the major question...

What if I do the same thing for my Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest and Youtube accounts, so that I can combine all my Feeds in a single page and create a giant Timeline that includes many accounts?

Can Poyrazoğlu Can Poyrazoğlu · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-14T13:51:48

I don't think anyone will sue you for anything unless you change some stuff via HTML/CSS or JS, e.g. removing ads/logos, or modifying original content. It would be OK IMO to include the pages "as is", but you shouldn't be modifying the contents of it. After all, it is a risky process as the HTML of those pages are subject to changes, breaking some or all of your work in a split second. The best way is to go with the API. Any reasons you don't want to use the API? It's pretty straightforward and easy to use, and is probably easier than parsing raw HTML from various feeds and combining them.

Would it be illegal to embed tweets not using Twitter's API?

1 Answers