Final week, Twitter stated it’s shutting down free entry to its APIs beginning February 9. Now, days earlier than the deadline, Elon Musk stated that attributable to suggestions 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 selections underneath Musk’s administration. There is no such thing as a info on what constitutes “good content material” and who will resolve that.
Beforehand, Twitter shuttered API entry to third-party purchasers saying they broke a “long-standing rule” with none specification. Then the corporate silently up to date its developer phrases to mirror that app can’t “use or entry the Licensed Supplies to create or try and create a substitute or related service or product to the Twitter Functions.”
Following the announcement, a variety of builders who made enjoyable of bots criticized the decision saying that their automation offered free content material to folks and in flip enhanced the providers. Final week, Buzzfeed interviewed several bot developers who have been sad with the choice. These embody @_restaurant_bot which tweets random images 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 large tech execs and organizations following and unfollowing one another, will probably 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, informed TechCrunch 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 carry pleasure to many individuals day by day.
He talked about that it might be pricey to keep up these bots who’re offering free content material to the platform
“I’ve greater than 80 bots on Twitter so it might take me a number of thousand {dollars} to maintain them up yearly and I can’t afford that sort of cash,” he stated.