A week after Twitter announced the shutdown of free API access, the company said today that it will charge $100 per month for the basic API tier. This will allow developers access to a “low level of API usage” – without specifying what that means exactly – and the Ads API.
The company had planned to shut down free access to its API on February 9, and now it has extended that deadline until February 13. But with no details available on the restructuring of API pricing and access levels, this extension seems symbolic as developers won’t be able to plan their changes.
Last week’s announcement drew a lot of criticism from developers, especially people who mock bots for posting information or images. Later, Elon Musk said the company would provide a free API for bots posting “good” content. In the latest round of announcements, Twitter said it would provide a lightweight, write-only API to these bot developers with a posting limit of 1,500 tweets per month (or two tweets per hour).
Twitter also added that it will be deprecating the premium API, which was part of v1.1, on February 13. While the company has said that developers can request enterprise access, it’s unclear whether those subscribed to elevated access with the v2 API will be affected.
While the new announcement lays the groundwork for API levels and base bots, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding academic research. Under previous management, the company offered special access to researchers with API v2. However, there is no information that access will be removed as the social network discontinues free API tiers. Researchers rely on this data to report trends in hate speech or misinformation on the platform. It is therefore essential that these researchers have permission to access the data to observe security problems on Twitter.
Apart from that, people have also pointed out that engineers who build solutions for natural disasters like earthquakes also rely on the Twitter API. Stopping the free offer will therefore affect these solutions.
Making API access paid is Musk’s latest move to bring more money to Twitter. The company has now expanded Twitter Blue to 15 countries. According to recent reports, only 180,000 people have signed up for it in the United States. The information noted that at this rate, Twitter is expected to earn just $27.8 million this year from subscriptions.
