Final week, Twitter stated it’s shutting down free access to its APIs beginning February 9. Now, days earlier than the deadline, Elon Musk stated that after getting suggestions from builders, Twitter will present a write-only API for “bots offering good content material that’s free.”
This determination is as opaque as among the different coverage choices beneath Musk’s administration. There is no such thing as a info on what constitutes “good content material” and who will resolve that. Nevertheless, if Twitter finally ends up implementing this rule, some bots will get a brand new lifeline on the social community.
Beforehand, Twitter shuttered API access to third-party clients saying they broke a “long-standing rule” with none specification. Then the corporate silently updated its developer terms to replicate that apps can’t “use or entry the Licensed Supplies to create or try to create a substitute or related service or product to the Twitter Purposes.”
Following the announcement, quite a lot of builders who made enjoyable of bots criticized the decision, saying that their automation offered free content material to individuals and in flip enhanced the providers. Final week, BuzzFeed interviewed several bot developers who had been sad with the choice. These embrace @_restaurant_bot which tweets random pictures of eating places and @_weather_bot_which tweets pictures of various locations with climate updates.
In the intervening time, it’s not clear if accounts like @BigTechAlert, which tweets about huge tech execs and organizations following and unfollowing one another, will likely be eligible for this free tier as they may have to scan account info.
Darius Kazemi, a developer who has made over 80 bots and even organized a bot devs summit in 2016, advised over a name that these automated accounts have been an integral a part of Twitter for years. He stated that a few of these bots with hundreds of followers convey pleasure to many individuals every day.
He talked about that it could be pricey to take care of these bots which can be offering free content material to the platform.
“I’ve greater than 80 bots on Twitter so it could take me a number of thousand {dollars} to maintain them up yearly and I can’t afford that type of cash,” he stated.
Musk has been making an attempt to generate extra income for Twitter with strikes like a brand new pricey subscription plan and ramping up advert cash. He additionally plans to indicate adverts in replies to share revenue with creators. Whereas the small print on how this can work are skinny, the Twitter CEO stated that solely Blue Subscribers can earn this money. So it’s possible that content material bots received’t earn cash even when adverts are displayed on their accounts or in replies beneath their tweets.
Twitter’s free API discontinuation doesn’t simply have an effect on bot builders. There are tons of pupil builders and hate speech or misinformation researchers who may not have a finances to pay a month-to-month payment. Twitter’s v2 API had particular entry for lecturers however which may not be the case beneath the brand new API guidelines.
Builders have additionally pointed out that quite a lot of bots spreading spam don’t truly use the official API. So the corporate’s intention to close down free APIs to weed out spam may not work nicely.
