Cash-strapped Twitter to start charging developers for API access next week
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And slowly, but surely, all the reasons for using Twitter in the first place die one by one.
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Wow, I can't see most of the users of the API wanting to pay for it given what Twitter has devolved to the last three months.
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This is so fucking childish from Apartheid Clyde. There are a number of automated accounts that have large followings that use the API to post to twitter. At least just charge people that are pulling data out, and not those that are improving your platform by generating content. Ugh, I really love twitter too....
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The beginning of the end. I'm ready for the next social media tool that billionaires try to buy to inflate their ego. I always knew Mlon Eusk's hubris would come back to bite.
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"OK. We'd like to charge you to use the API that creates things that bring traffic to our site, which is how we would monetize our services, if there actually WAS some way to monetize our services. Please expect frequent price increases, as well as generally getting screwed over because we fired anyone who has any clue what's going on, as we continue to make it more difficult for you to bring people to our site to make us money (not that we make any)."
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Weird. Telling developers and users that a core function is going behind a paywall in a week but not saying how much that is going to be so they can plan ahead is, well, par for the course for current Twitter actually.
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I like Elon to buy and kill Tiktok next. Then he can move to Facebook. As far as I can tell. The death of social-media platforms is a major positive for society as a whole.
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Gee, setting fire to the ad revenue streams by allowing the absolute worst people back on the platform and then trying to financially gatekeep the people who drove the most engagement on the platform seems like a winning strategy! Surely this will lead Twitter to a glorious and moneyed future!
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I mean, why don't they just start charging users a monthly subscription fee? That's a super-genius idea!
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I find it peculiar that Musk isn't announcing these changes on HIS public Twitter feed, instead choosing to hide behind the Dev account. Yet he was all gung-ho on changing Twitter for the better. We all know it's his order to change Twitter since he's the "Chief Twit". If he wants the title of the head of Twitter then he gets saddled with the fallout of bad choices regardless of what account publishes the info.
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Maybe don't leverage buyout something where you have no reasonable path to success?
The only winning move is not to play.
The only winning move is not to play.
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How does this benefit Twitter? How does the small amount of income, overcome the functionality lose? How does this drive engagement/interaction with Twitter? Why is this the "Smart" business move? I'm very confused.
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I expect that in five years, business school professors all over the world will start classes on management with a Harvard Business School case study of what Musk did to Twitter with "You will not believe the crazy shit that went down, but this crap is just too insane to make up. Believe it or not? This really happened...."
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How to kill a platform in 3 easy steps ![:\](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/civis/data/assets/smilies/slash-1x.png "Slash :\")
This is so dumb, panicky, and short sighted; perfectly on brand for Mushy
This is so dumb, panicky, and short sighted; perfectly on brand for Mushy
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IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Eliminating Twitter's value proposition is the only way to increase Twitter's value. It's just basic arithmetic: 1 - 1 = 2.
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This is good for Bitcoin Twitter.
More seriously, I don't think Musk really understands the concept of a software platform, versus an application. You make platforms so that other people can build value for you without you having to pay them. Any money you could make from these people directly by charging them for API access is dwarfed by the money they make for you by producing content for your platform.
More seriously, I don't think Musk really understands the concept of a software platform, versus an application. You make platforms so that other people can build value for you without you having to pay them. Any money you could make from these people directly by charging them for API access is dwarfed by the money they make for you by producing content for your platform.
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And just like that, nobody uses a Twitter bot anymore.
There are very few, if any, bots that do anything that would actually generate money. The vast majority of bot developers were basically just creating them for fun and/or providing a public service, which increased Twitter's overall value. There is no reason they would pay to do that.
Once again, Twitter "leadership" entirely missing the point and making another terrible move because they suddenly find themselves cash-starved.
There are very few, if any, bots that do anything that would actually generate money. The vast majority of bot developers were basically just creating them for fun and/or providing a public service, which increased Twitter's overall value. There is no reason they would pay to do that.
Once again, Twitter "leadership" entirely missing the point and making another terrible move because they suddenly find themselves cash-starved.
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Also worth noting that he has not stepped down, despite claiming he would respect the result of his twitter straw poll.
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In many ways, Musk buying Twitter was a blessing in disguise - I finally closed the last social network account I had.
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Celery Man
Ars Legatus Legionis
Earthquake and other natural disaster warning bots may go down too. Lot of good things being caught in the crossfire here.
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In case anyone buys Musk's lie that it will prevent abuse or spammers: it won't. Most abusive automation doesn't use the API, but instead uses scraping/normal account imitation techniques to bypass the API flood control, rate limitation, etc.
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It‘s the blue tick situation all over again - they haven’t the faintest idea what they’re doing, and they’re making it up as they go along.
I fully expect some sort of reversal on this in the coming days. A free API access that’s rate-limited, or something.
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The line from the article “it is not unreasonable to want to find a way to charge those developers who extract more value than they contribute” is so out of touch.
These bots are what add the majority of the value of the whole platform. Their horrible algorithm prioritizing garbage and the flood of racism has ruined twitter as a platform for user interaction. A few bot were the only value left.
This would be like youtube deciding to charge for publishing videos because “it is not unreasonable to want to find a way to charge those content creators who extract more value than they contribute”.
These bots are what add the majority of the value of the whole platform. Their horrible algorithm prioritizing garbage and the flood of racism has ruined twitter as a platform for user interaction. A few bot were the only value left.
This would be like youtube deciding to charge for publishing videos because “it is not unreasonable to want to find a way to charge those content creators who extract more value than they contribute”.
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I noticed this earlier, because there was some discussion about a Reddit bot, which essentially Tweeted stuff from a (fairly niche) trans subreddit I follow on it. I can't imagine the creator of that bot making any money from it whatsoever.
Does Apartheid Boy think all users of those Twitter APIs make any kind of money? I'd bet the overwhelming majority are just people who spent a small time making some kind of bot like that. ANY kind of "PAY ME!" will likely be an "OK, no more useful bot that some niche people like.".
Penny wise, Pound foolish.
Does Apartheid Boy think all users of those Twitter APIs make any kind of money? I'd bet the overwhelming majority are just people who spent a small time making some kind of bot like that. ANY kind of "PAY ME!" will likely be an "OK, no more useful bot that some niche people like.".
Penny wise, Pound foolish.
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Elon Musk Super Genius (... in the Wile e Coyote sense) continues to fail to understand that Tweets themselves are not going to generate profit. They are merely a means to 'engagement' and the advertising revenue that comes from that. Any short term cash flow is going to be offset by the number of users this drives off the platform.
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I’m continually impressed by Elon’s inability to understand where twitter’s real value lives; both in terms of where it comes from and how to monetize it.
It’s not like Twitter is bad at running a large scale reasonably high performance and lowish latency message bus(there are almost certainly a number of rather more expensive and self-important ‘enterprise message bus’ products that are humiliatingly worse); but that’s just a means to an end: it’s neither what draws people to Twitter nor what gets sold to pay the bills. That’s where the people on Twitter to come to read and the people who come to Twitter to read them come in.
Surely nothing bad will happen if we make the experience progressively worse for those two groups; since we’re totally a hardcore engineering company…
It’s not like Twitter is bad at running a large scale reasonably high performance and lowish latency message bus(there are almost certainly a number of rather more expensive and self-important ‘enterprise message bus’ products that are humiliatingly worse); but that’s just a means to an end: it’s neither what draws people to Twitter nor what gets sold to pay the bills. That’s where the people on Twitter to come to read and the people who come to Twitter to read them come in.
Surely nothing bad will happen if we make the experience progressively worse for those two groups; since we’re totally a hardcore engineering company…
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Their unconscious goal really seems to be to stop people from using Twitter. 
I wonder how big of an impact this will have on third-parties that use Twitter for login and binding accounts. I know a bunch of games that don’t let you swap bindings but I don’t see why they would pay Twitter considering it seems to be a pretty low % of users using that API.
I wonder how big of an impact this will have on third-parties that use Twitter for login and binding accounts. I know a bunch of games that don’t let you swap bindings but I don’t see why they would pay Twitter considering it seems to be a pretty low % of users using that API.
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They're actually announcing it a week in advance? They're not just locking everyone out and telling people a week later like they did last time?
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