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It’s a sad day for our favorite gimmicky Twitter accounts, as we may soon have to say goodbye to them. Late Wednesday night, the official Twitter Developer account announced that the platform will stop offering free access to the platform’s API (Application Programming Interface) on February 9.
Access to Twitter API v1.1 and v2 will soon be replaced with a “paid basic level”, which may further cripple third-party support. Twitter API (opens in new tab) allows third-party developers to access publicly available Twitter data to create bots or apps for the site. We’re not just talking about bots like RemindMe_OfThis that basically remind users of tweets they come across; researchers have used the API in the past to track hate speech online (opens in new tab).
It seems that the developers are trying to take advantage of the huge amount of data on the platform. As the Twitter Developer account said in a thread (opens in new tab), “Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more each week…Twitter data is among the world’s most powerful datasets.” The new price for the level has not been revealed. It was previously hinted at with the account saying it will give more details sometime next week.
To make money
It appears that this is another attempt by Twitter (and its controversial CEO Elon Musk) to monetize the platform. Purchasable APIs are nothing new on Twitter, but they are more aimed at companies (opens in new tab). Entrepreneurial users can collect a number of “Tweets posted in the last 30 days” based on a given query using the Premium Search API, but this means Pay Twitter (opens in new tab) up to $2,500 for up to 10,000 requests per month. However, is it a wise move if advertisers flee en masse?
That’s not to say the platform will charge the developer thousands of dollars to use Twitter’s API to build a bot (we don’t know yet). It’s quite possible that developers just need to pay $99 per month or less (opens in new tab) for access. However, given the recent banning third-party apps as part of “enforcing… longstanding API rules” and the A mountain of debt of 12.5 billion dollars (opens in new tab) Elon Musk is down because of his Twitter purchase, it’s hard to imagine things will stay cheap.
For mega companies like Google, this probably won’t change anything. But for small developers, like those behind the Ace Attorney Court Bot on Twitter (opens in new tab)this spells doom for them unless they can somehow scrape together the money for the expected high costs.
User outrage
The outrage has been deafening on Twitter. Look through the developer thread and quote tweets and you’ll find nearly 50,000 users criticizing the end of the free API. an user, Luke Hammer (opens in new tab), said that “this change will destroy research, activism and commercial projects” and he will stop “working on non-commercial projects that use the API”. Hammer goes on to say that he will have to “re-evaluate which commercial projects are still viable.” Others lament the short term (opens in new tab), called it “cruel”.
At this point, we would have loved to ask Twitter about this new move; however, their press contact is nowhere to be found. We’ll be sure to reach out if we ever find it.
It’s a shame that Twitter continues to turn its back on developers. APIs are a great way for users to improve a service without the company having to spend time and money developing a new feature. If you are thinking of creating bots with an API on another service, it is recommended to use some endpoint security to keep you safe.