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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

#21

Post by olliej »

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.

IIRC the twitter website goes to great lengths to mangle itself to prevent ad blockers presumably.

Of course this used to have the side effect of breaking significant swathes of basic browser UX, especially in areas of accessibility. I assume they’re better now than they once were, but given musk’s historical behavior I assume he won’t consider breaking something like accessibility to be bad or problematic.

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

#22

Post by olliej »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #5

Twitter is going into code Red when news organizations are going to start charging Twitter for use of their site... Or simply blocking them.

I don’t think that’s likely.

News orgs dependent on people seeing ads, so they benefit from their story going viral on twitter more than I think twitter benefits from people posting them.

At the other end you have the conservative news channels that aggressively push bigot nonsense, and short as hell wouldn’t drop the opportunity to continue twitters conversion to parler.

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

#25

Post by nly »

senttoschool wrote: post #7
warning26 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, that's exactly the business model of offering a free API.

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

#27

Post by asdadsdad »

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)…

I don't think that's too related to cutting down bots. It's about making money from their dataset, which is valid. Why do people think they can hammer an API without paying?

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

#28

Post by asdadsdad »

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.

corollary: never build a company that depends on web scraping

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

#30

Post by anigbrowl »

asdadsdad wrote: post #27
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)…

I don't think that's too related to cutting down bots. It's about making money from their dataset, which is valid. Why do people think they can hammer an API without paying?

They already have an enterprise tier for people who want to build commercial stuff on top of Twitter, and they already monetize their datasets and have done for years. How do you expect to sign up students/new developers if they have to pay before they figure out how to use the API?
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