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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

#11

Post by andreareina »

anigbrowl wrote: post #8

@dang wondering why this rather major tech story doesn't make the front page, when stories with fewer points that were posted much earlier have. The lack of transparency is actively hindering HN's news functionality.

Probably a combination of:

Users flagging the post

Domain-based downweight (dang has mentioned it exists for Wikipedia for example, no idea if it’s automated or manual)

Posts with bad comments:upvote ratio get downweighted (IIRC dang calls them overheated discursions?)

And FWIW it’s on the front page now

[EDIT] no it’s not. I was on the new page not front haha. Probably people sick of hearing about Twitter and flagging then.

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

#12

Post by FateOfNations »

anigbrowl wrote: post #8

@dang wondering why this rather major tech story doesn't make the front page, when stories with fewer points that were posted much earlier have. The lack of transparency is actively hindering HN's news functionality.

It's also just breaking, past 10pm on the west coast of the US, when we all should be in bed.

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

#14

Post by krageon »

anigbrowl wrote: post #3

- 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)…

It's simple: Use the website. It will never stop working because people use it and you can automate and scrape it just fine. Kind of sucks that you have to go through the effort - but then there is no social media corporation that isn't toxic in some way to it's userbase.

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

#15

Post by anigbrowl »

krageon wrote: post #14
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

- 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)…

It's simple: Use the website. It will never stop working because people use it and you can automate and scrape it just fine. Kind of sucks that you have to go through the effort - but then there is no social media corporation that isn't toxic in some way to it's userbase.

I actually don't mind scraping it that much, and even enjoy the adversarial aspects of writing scrapers. but it makes a lot of high level functionality like filtered streams or historical search much less accessible; I'd probably never have learned a lot of network analysis stuff over the last decade or so if I'd had to to pay to access streaming data first. Also, I think it's going to be harder for academic researchers to get institutional approval to scrape adversarially, so it could put a dent in a lot of social science research by forcing people to chase grants instead of focusing on their code.

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

#19

Post by genocidicbunny »

dan_pixelflow wrote: post #17

[flagged]

If its that important to your grade, could you not shell out for the paid service until your project is completed? I'm assuming this is a semester project of some kind, and probably not terribly high-traffic, so it shouldn't be too expensive. I know it sounds like giving into extortion because it more or less is, but at 40% it sounds like a serious chunk of your grade that it might be worthwhile if you factor in the cost of learning to not rely on someone else's charity.

The last part isn't meant to chastise you. Twitter's API has long been free to access so it wasn't unreasonable to assume it would be so. But it has been true pretty much forever that you should not rely on someone else's goodwill and charity for a critical part of your project or business.

(None of this is to say that this change isn't being badly managed, just that I think you still have options here, despite being somewhat unpleasant.)

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

#20

Post by dan_pixelflow »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #19
dan_pixelflow wrote: post #17

[flagged]

If its that important to your grade, could you not shell out for the paid service until your project is completed? I'm assuming this is a semester project of some kind, and probably not terribly high-traffic, so it shouldn't be too expensive. I know it sounds like giving into extortion because it more or less is, but at 40% it sounds like a serious chunk of your grade that it might be worthwhile if you factor in the…

Agreed, I'll be waiting for more information - but it's even more mad that I have to wait until 'next week' for that, a mere handful of days before the shut off date as well.
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