Issue #1062: in_reply_to_status_id returns null if the replied-to account is protected

For at least a day or so, any requests for tweets return

in_reply_to_status_id: null
in_reply_to_status_id_str: null

if the tweet is a reply to somebody with a protected account.

This behaviour is consistent across the Twitter website, several Twitter clients and accessing the API via Python using tweedy.

I don’t know if the problem occurs when the tweet is created (the value is never being assigned) or when the tweet is retrieved (the value is being assigned, but not returned in the API call).

The net result of this is to break conversation threading for a lot of people, especially those who follow a lot of protected accounts. I’ve seen confusion in my timeline about what the cause is, because it’s not immediately obvious what the criterion is for threading to break. It also makes life harder for protected users, because any conversation that includes them breaks immediately.