I remember when steam came out people absolutely lost their shit. They rallied against it hardcore because they wanted complete control and ownership of their games. The single image that sticks in my mind is an animated gif someone made of the steam logo, two connecting rods, cycling back and forth like one of those mechanical fucking machines, fucking a guy in the ass. It was the same kind of juvenile vitriol that is currently on display. Imagine those people had been successful, and they might have been. Steam is beloved by everyone and is a huge and important part of gaming today. And why couldn’t those people just have an open mind about it? Why couldn’t they see past their own noses?
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
311–320 of 488 posts
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Business pricing is very often commercially sensitive [..] I'm not after internal pricing/B2B pricing/discounting, in my thought experiment I "just" want free API access to information that's already on public websites (eg end-user/retail pricing for rooms/flights/widgets). I'm not aware of any airlines/hotels/retailers that allow even that. In bulk, it's commercially sensitive too.
I've heard that they do a lot of price manipulation with holidays, so I can see why they wouldn't want to provide enough data for customers to track prices over time. Also, you'd be bypassing their advertising. But yeah, it would be great if we didn't have to use their websites to navigate the data.
> you'd be bypassing their advertising.
Right.
So back to where we started: what's actually wrong with Twitter deciding to insist on eyeballs on twitter.com instead of scripts pointing at their free API?
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> basically a week to decide what to do with your dev project Even less for some. It seems further apps are being shut down in the run up because they have "violated Twitter Rules and policies”. Such as movetodon [0] - locked out today - a service which helps you connect to the fediverse accounts of twitter users you follow. And reports that debirdify is closed out too. [0] https://mastodon.social/@Tibor/109800904950…
Oof. I did a last pass migration last night, and noticed that movetodon was broken then, but I assumed it was due to load, rather than... this. End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter.
> End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter.
Am-I the only one surprised the site still hasn't had a major (multi-hour) outage at this point?
Considering the waves of resignations that hit the automated content filtering and bot mitigation teams, it's no wonder they are getting desperate.
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oof. I did a last pass migration last night, and noticed that movetodon was broken then, but I assumed it was due to load, rather than... this. End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter.
> End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter. Am-I the only one surprised the site still hasn't had a major (multi-hour) outage at this point? Considering the waves of resignations that hit the automated content filtering and bot mitigation teams, it's no wonder they are getting desperate.
Twitter still has like 1000 heavily dedicated (either because they love elon or getting fired means getting deported) which means they can fight a lot of fires and keep things going.
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#315500 requests for $150 seems like inadequate pricing.
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1621259936524300289
This is mostly untrue. While it’s possible to stay anonymous you need a phone number, and it can’t be from twilio or other services. It’s been this way for years. I strongly suspect the bots that are unverified use headless browsers. The problem won’t go away.
Furthermore, every time I create an API service, I get immediately banned (before I do anything) over and over until I truly prove that my bot is in good faith. They are super aggressive, and they actively enforce their rules (in the past, I've tried to make bots that reply to folks - that don't follow me - and the bot lasts like four hours).
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
The website is awful. It's horrific. It was the worst site I visited regularly until I started using Nitter instances. I'd rather not know what is going on than go to it. I wish they'd wind the UI back 10 years, to back when it was pleasant to browse.
The point is that the website is an API, irrelevant if it is a good or bad UI.
Depending on twitter's pricing, this might not be worthwhile.
Scraping web pages is a last resort for when proper APIs are not available.
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oof. I did a last pass migration last night, and noticed that movetodon was broken then, but I assumed it was due to load, rather than... this. End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter.
> End of an era; Twitter is dead. Whatever is left, it's not Twitter. Am-I the only one surprised the site still hasn't had a major (multi-hour) outage at this point? Considering the waves of resignations that hit the automated content filtering and bot mitigation teams, it's no wonder they are getting desperate.
Wait, didn’t it? I recall a prolonged period when no-one could log in (and a few prolonged periods where no-one using 2fa could log in)
Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#319I'm still surprised that anyone expected the acquisition of Twitter by a billionaire with a long demonstrated lack of empathy, social grace or self awareness would go at all well. He started a fire in a movie theater and now wants to lock the doors and raise the price on whatever water and extinguishers are on hand.
Whilst I like the fire analogy a lot. it doesn't capture how much he's on the hook vs what we loose if twitter dies. I will loose...... can't really tell. Elon will have irreparable reputational damage done to him forever.
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Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API
#320We have a business that relies on the Twitter API. I don’t mind paying to access the API, but the way they’re handling this makes me want to deprecate support for Twitter entirely. I am only learning about this change from this thread. Even worse, we only have 7 days to react.
Serious question though: If you're a business, is it really a huge deal to part with, idk, maybe $10-$20 a month for the API (idk what it will cost)? Talking in pure financial terms.
It’s actually much more expensive. See https://developer.twitter.com/en/pricing/search-30day
Up to 500 requests PER MONTH: $149.00 Up to 1000: $289.00 Up to 2,500: $699.00 Up to 5,000: $1,299.00 Up to 10,000: $2,499.00