Twitter altered API rules for bots that create ‘good content’

Twitter’s future direction has become increasingly difficult to predict due to frequent, unannounced changes and new features designed to monetize even the most fundamental skills. The fact that Elon Musk is scrambling to find methods to pay his obligations accumulated as an outcome of the social media site’s acquisition, the most recent of which was the business’s decision to stop offering free access to the Twitter API on February 9, makes this more obvious. An era of entertaining and educational automation systems on the platform came to an end as a result, but just days before the move was scheduled to go into force, Musk reversed his decision.

In a post, Twitter’s CEO stated that as long as bots continue to provide “excellent content,” they will have access to the service’s “light, write-only API.”

The decision by Twitter to lock its API behind a paywall has only been slightly modified as a result of the shift. In order to access what was once a free product, researchers and app developers who depend on third-party Twitter clients might still need to pay a fee. The price of the Twitter API’s paid version as of 2022 ranges from $99 to $1,899 per month, depending on the degree of access.

For that price, you’ll get more functionality and access to the interface, which can be used for a variety of purposes. But it’s difficult to envision a programmer paying that much for something as simple as tweeting a screenshot or uploading an opossum photo every hour. Many developers have already promised to take down these bots before February 9 due to their inability to pay the maintenance fees.

Thankfully, Musk’s most recent tweet indicates that a number of entertaining or educational bots that you frequently see on the site won’t be disappearing anytime soon. Nevertheless, it’s still not clear what “excellent material” will qualify for free use of the Twitter API.

Musk’s decision to charge for API access was his latest attempt to monetize everything within the social media behemoth he purchased for $44 billion, mostly with borrowed funds. Since taking over Twitter, he has also fired more than half of its employees and begun charging users to remain verified.