As part of Elon Musk’s latest attempts to turn a de facto online public square into a profitable enterprise (and rid the site of spam), Twitter announced earlier this month that it will be removing free API access for developers. The move has inspired near-unanimous outrage and disappointment from researchers, developers and journalists who rely on API tools to carry out their work.
“Nobody really knows a lot about what’s going on, said Carlos Hernández- Echevarría, head of public policy at Maldita, a large independent fact-checking organization in Spain. “What we have is an announcement from Twitter that is denying API access that used to be free up until now, adding a paywall.”
Hernández-Echevarría said Twitter has not provided researchers with much clarity, but that several research projects in the fact-checking community depend on Twitter’s free API access and would likely disappear under a pay-to-play arrangement.
Twitter has provided almost no direct communication to researchers, developers and fact-checkers who use the tool, aside from a few posts from the @TwitterDev account that raised more questions than answers. The series of tweets addressing the new API plan were all heavily ratioed — meaning the replies in the threads below received more likes than the original post, or that the retweets and comments for the post outnumbered its likes.
The first post came Feb. 2, saying that in a week, Twitter would “no longer support free access to the Twitter API” and that a paid version would be available instead. After the predictable outrage from researchers, developers and fact-checkers whose work relied on the tool, Twitter posted again on Feb. 13 that “there has been an immense amount of enthusiasm for the upcoming changes with Twitter API” and that it would be delaying the new API platform launch by “a few days.”
Several pending community notes below the tweet noted the opposite:
“Enthusiasm is defined as a ‘strong excitement of feeling’ or ‘intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval,’” one note reads. “There is no evidence that people feel this way about new restrictions being applied to an API.”
“Users and developers have expressed outrage at the situation,” reads another.
“If you told me, I would have said this is a satire story. This can’t be true,” said Maarten Schenk, the co-founder of LeadStories, a U.S.-based fact-checking outlet that regularly employs the API in its work. “But no. It’s real. It’s an astounding level of unprofessionalism by a major organization.”
Schenk posted a poll under Twitter’s latest “enthusiasm” claim, the results of which suggest a resounding lack of enthusiasm for the update.
Hernández-Echevarría said researchers use the API to quickly identify content that is going viral, as well as to map out networks of disseminators of disinformation.
“Some others are complaining about ongoing projects ending — for example, tracking the harassment of women journalists. If they don't have the data, they can’t do it anymore,” said Hernández- Echevarría. “Even organizations that raise awareness about natural disasters — such as the one happening in Turkey right now — have been relying on this technology that is going to be soon unavailable.”
“The ironic thing is that they’re ostensibly trying to stop the bad bots — the spammers,” said Schenk. “But they actually make money from spamming. Oh yeah, here’s a hundred bucks, no problem, and then they keep spamming. But it pushes out the hobbyists that make bots that make Twitter fun.”
A task force within the European Code of Practice on Disinformation has already met, and plans to communicate the potential legal obligations of Twitter regarding API access to the European Commission.
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