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Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

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Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#2

Post by senttoschool »

This is why I will never build a company based around a free API from a for-profit company. I'd never be able to sleep well at night knowing that years of work and all the employees/families that depend on the business is dependent on someone who could wake up one day and decide on a whim to end access.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#3

Post by anigbrowl »

- announced at 10pm - basically a week to decide what to do with your dev project - No information to help you make that decision

This seems like more management by manchild. I strongly suspect that Musk realized his promises of cutting down bots etc. were failing and that they either couldn't or wouldn't develop abuse detection, so he's decided to solve the problem by making it cost money, with the (perhaps desired) side effect of crippling academic/analytic research.

As an amateur network science researcher, I'm pretty steamed. I enjoy doing my own network analyses using tools like Gephi and have monitored probably a hundred breaking news or trending issues, as well as amassing a great collection of academic papers by smarter folk than me. I don't run any kind of app or service that sits on top of Twitter, but those who do run legitimate services are now being held hostage because of the unchecked abuse. Ant the failure to deal with botspam is lamentable. Twitter has refused for years to implement even the simplest things like hashing tweets and looking for collisions, or considering the count of edges to the hashtag graph, or even looking at tweet frequency. Many of their abuse problems will continue unabated; the sellers in the market for bogus twitter accounts are likely delighted because they now have a great excuse to raise prices, even though most of their 'product' is produced by hand with cheap labor in poor countries.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#4

Post by warning26 »

senttoschool wrote: post #2

This is why I will never build a company based around a free API from a for-profit company. I'd never be able to sleep well at night knowing that years of work and all the employees/families that depend on the business is dependent on someone who could wake up one day and decide on a whim to end access.

I think this every time there’s a “what cool thing should I build with OpenAI’s API?” post.

A nice thought, but once OpenAI decides to pull the rug out from under you, it won’t matter what you built.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#7

Post by senttoschool »

warning26 wrote: post #4
senttoschool wrote: post #2

This is why I will never build a company based around a free API from a for-profit company. I'd never be able to sleep well at night knowing that years of work and all the employees/families that depend on the business is dependent on someone who could wake up one day and decide on a whim to end access.

I think this every time there’s a “what cool thing should I build with OpenAI’s API?” post. A nice thought, but once OpenAI decides to pull the rug out from under you, it won’t matter what you built.

It's a bit safer with OpenAI because they have paid plans. But you're right, it's still a bit risky.

In the distant future, OpenAI can copy and vertically integrate features their API users have created or they can simply pull the plug on them.

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