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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

#371

Post by tee_0 »

tee_0 wrote: post #311

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…

From a Reddit thread ten years ago:

Steam killed big half-life mods. Essentially, by keeping all the clients up-to-date (by force) with no way to go back, they forced all the clients past where they'd released the SDKs for...

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

#373

Post by tqwhite »

clipsy wrote: post #73
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.

By the same reasoning, one shouldn’t build a company based on any API, regardless of whether it’s free or paid; the existence of a paid API does not automatically guarantee any future pricing or even availability. One could build a company around a paid API only to have the pricing jacked up 10x or the API shut down or neutered in some critical way and end up in, functionally, the same situation.

Also, the universe could blow up tomorrow. Everything is possible but, what's not likely is a company risking a revenue stream capriciously. There's no penalty to Musk for stopping free. There's a huge penalty to Twilio for driving paid users off the system.

If there is room to jack up the price 10x, then the current price is tantamount to free. If the deal is too good to be true, don't build your company on it.

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

#374

Post by acdha »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #175
akmarinov wrote: post #119

Guys, Twitter is we knew it is dead, it might even completely die soon. The sooner accounts like celebs, governments, etc realize it and move on - the better

I don't use it aside from following links to it (e.g. from HN), so this isn't intended to be a counter anecdote... but from that perspective it seems almost exactly the same as before Musk took over. What's changed?

Musk made the finances much worse by adding so much debt to the books right around the time he pushed a large number of advertisers and people who'd been creating content for him away. Twitter would otherwise have been looking at a profit measured in hundreds of millions this year, similar to what last year would have been without that lawsuit settlement.

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

#375

Post by mcguire »

ryantgtg wrote: post #261
numpad0 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter API had traditionally been configurable between read-only, read-write, read-write + DM. Most apps request either of the latter two, but you always could.

Does this change affect all access? Like, I have half a dozen bots that only write (post rss items). At first I assumed this was only impacting read access (apps that mimic the twitter app), but now I’m not so sure.

I believe things like @PossumEveryHour and some of the automated traffic/weather systems have announced they'll be shutting down.

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

#376

Post by logifail »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #358
logifail wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I wouldn't say that it's necessarily 'wrong', but I do think it's a bad decision. The problem is that they've let people have access and build upon their free API and pulling the rug from under them is going to annoy them and generate bad will towards Twitter. In some ways it reminds me of the Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast licensing shenanigans where the business is annoying people building an ecosystem around their pr…

> The problem is that they've let people have access and build upon their free API and pulling the rug from under them is going to annoy them [..]

Yup, although we all know that Twitter just the latest example in a loooong line of companies to have pulled this stunt since, well, what feels like forever.

> and generate bad will towards Twitter

I'm fairly ambivalent about this aspect, and I doubt Musk cares much, it's not as though the haters weren't already hating before this latest incident.

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

#377

Post by heresjohnny »

I think I’m in the minority here, but I understand and support this decision. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it: this move is bad for the internet and freedom of information.

However, this company is close to bankruptcy and is sitting on a wealth of interesting data. Ads can provide revenue only up to a certain point, after which UX will be affected. If I were Twitter’s CEO, I would’ve done the same.

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

#378

Post by libraryatnight »

bantunes wrote: post #149
rsynnott wrote: post #60

Okay, so this one is nearly making me buy into those conspiracy theories that Musk is deliberately breaking Twitter because 4d chess (only nearly; this is incompetence rather than anything else). There's an argument to be had whether it makes sense for Twitter to have a free API tier. I personally think that it's obvious it should: - A lot of Twitter content/engagement is created by bots, and people quote-tweeting sa…

He's a troll, so whatever the outcome he'll be able to say it was his intent all along (as trolls do).

somehow after all these years, we're still feeding them.

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

#379

Post by a4isms »

Jach wrote: post #230
xena wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a digital sharecropping service? I've never heard of that before.

Sharecropping is of course when a landowner lets someone else farm their land in exchange for a share of the crops they produce. It has the usual tradeoffs, incentives for each party, and dysfunctions at the extremes (like demanding 99.9% share) that any landlord/renter system has. I think I originally came across the expansion to a digital concept here https://blog.codinghorror.com/are-you-a-digital-sharecropper...…

Sharecropping also has a strong parallel to making apps for somebody else's walled garden.

You do the labour to create the app, you do the labour of finding the right product-market fit, you take all the risks, and the landlord takes 30% or whatever for themselves, in exchange for ostensibly providing you with a platform you could not build and popularize yourself.

Everyone complains heartily about the 30%, but for a lot of sharecroppers, that's just the cost of doing business and they do fine. The bigger problem is when the landlord crunches some numbers and decides that their platform would benefit from commoditizing your app.

When that happens, they do things like buy your competitor, rebrand it as their own app, and give it away preinstalled. For example...

"The True Story of Audion:" https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Or they just use all the market data they have thanks to your app to build their own app and use their brand and muscle to squeeze you into irrelevance. Microsoft in its heyday was famous for this. Just ask Lotus about Excel, or ask WordPerfect about Word.

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

#380

Post by amanaplanacanal »

tee_0 wrote: post #302
papito wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is horrible . I quite often click on embedded tweets and then end up spending more time on the site. It's literally a cheap lead in for ad exposure. Musk does not seem to understand how this whole Internet thing works. "If Musk wants to know about money, I’ll tell him. She launched into a technical explanation of the ­company’s data-center efficiency, curious to see if he would follow along. Instead, he interrup…

You believe that there will never be embedded tweets again because twitter is going to charge an unknown amount of money for their API? You have musk derangement syndrome dude

He said he wants $100 a month, whatever that’s worth.
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