Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter improves API usage for researchers

blog.twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#31

Post by artembugara »

We've been running our startup [1] in this "media research industry" for just a while. We're on the classic media use case side.

It is true that the vast majority of "research" is done by non-academics. Lots of companies doing market research want to mine media data.

Still, I believe that this "social media research" is a bit overvalued. There was this wave of "social media is the primary source where information appear". But now many realized how freaking difficult to separate this data from the noise comparing to traditional news published by journalists.

Also, take a look on this article [2] about how Dataminr sells insights from Twitter data to foreign governments (2017). Seems like just a way to punish the opposition channels.

[1] https://newscatcherapi.com/

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14412014/dataminr-twitter...

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#32

Post by anonymousDan »

tester34 wrote: post #9

basing on those UI screens, then why research is always associated with academia? there's a lot of strong people especially in CS who do not work with academia and still work on interesting stuff

Because it's easy for Twitter to draw the line between commercial and non-commercial use?

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#33

Post by sigil »

blindm wrote: post #8

I always wondered: how many of these tweets are just Justin Bieber fandom type posts, bots, spam, or other dross? Twitter is infamous for its bad signal to noise ratio. These researchers need to write algos to filter out all the noise

A lot! I ran named entity recognition on the Twitter garden hose back in 2012. The top entities were Bieber and the Jonas brothers.

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#35

Post by trident5000 »

minimaxir wrote: post #34

It's a shame access to this API is limited to academic institutions, as many social media/misinformation researchers are now independent or affiliated with journalistic institutions.

Misinformation and troll farms on Twitter start with unrestricted API usage to the masses.

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#36

Post by croon »

sojournerc wrote: post #30
croon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In late 2018, Twitter changed its policy on hateful conduct and harassment to officially prohibit intentionally calling a trans person by the wrong pronouns or using their pre-transition names.[62] Beginning in August 2018, Murphy stated that her Twitter account was locked more than once after she tweeted about issues involving trans women.[63] Twitter permanently suspended Murphy's account in late November 2018, a…

This thread started with: > And one might think liberals, putting liberty above order, would be aghast at silencing opponents to maintain order, and yet here we are. You aren't liberal, that's OK, and Twitter isn't a liberal platform, and definitely has a political bias towards the progressive left. I'd rather make decisions for myself than let Twitter tell me what is or isn't misinformation. > Sidenote: The Federali…

> Twitter isn't a liberal platform, and definitely has a political bias towards the progressive left.

[citation needed] seeing as your previous example fell flat.

> > Sidenote: The Federalist itself got its account banned from twitter for spreading covid misinformation.

> Thanks for proving my point

I fail to see your point. They spread misinformation that would get people killed, and were banned for it.

I've not in my 30 years on the internet spent more than a passing moment on a BBS, forum, social media that let anything go, nor would I want to as I've seen what it devolves into.

You have not displayed any basis for your assertion that the moderation enforcement on twitter is biased.

What point did I prove for you?

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#37

Post by Nextgrid »

trident5000 wrote: post #35
minimaxir wrote: post #34

It's a shame access to this API is limited to academic institutions, as many social media/misinformation researchers are now independent or affiliated with journalistic institutions.

Misinformation and troll farms on Twitter start with unrestricted API usage to the masses.

Misinformation & troll farms appear to do just fine with the current restricted API.

What evidence is there that read-only API access will make it significantly easier for them (enough to outweigh the other upsides)?

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#38

Post by trident5000 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #37
trident5000 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation and troll farms on Twitter start with unrestricted API usage to the masses.

Misinformation & troll farms appear to do just fine with the current restricted API. What evidence is there that read-only API access will make it significantly easier for them (enough to outweigh the other upsides)?

So you're telling me API's are not useful while at the same time telling me that API's are useful. Trolls want API access for the same reason researchers want access. You could argue research is the first step to becoming an effective troll.

Re: Twitter improves API usage for researchers

#39

Post by Nextgrid »

trident5000 wrote: post #38
Nextgrid wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation & troll farms appear to do just fine with the current restricted API. What evidence is there that read-only API access will make it significantly easier for them (enough to outweigh the other upsides)?

So you're telling me API's are not useful while at the same time telling me that API's are useful. Trolls want API access for the same reason researchers want access. You could argue research is the first step to becoming an effective troll.

I don't see API access as being necessary for a small-scale trolling operation, and large scale operations have enough resources to work around the lack of API by scraping.

I'm not saying that API access is completely useless, I was raising the question of whether the potential (and relatively small) benefit to trolling outweighs the major upsides of API access being available for all.

Post reply on HN