Ad revenue must be down bad.
Twitter Dev @TwitterDev
Feb 2
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵
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my guess is it’s more about raising the friction to make bots
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Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things. Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.
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Replying to @elonmusk @BillyM2k @ericnakagawa
I feel like the bad actors will still get around by abusing Twitter’s private API (the one the official apps use)

Feb 2, 2023 · 9:44 PM UTC

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Replying to @wongmjane @elonmusk @BillyM2k @ericnakagawa
They’ll also go one step ahead by automating the browser / app interactions Might be worth considering doing reCaptchas on clients of low confident scores when they’re trying to engage
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Jane I agree. Furthermore we should probably use recaptchas on clients with low confidence scores when they try to engage.
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Replying to @wongmjane @elonmusk @BillyM2k @ericnakagawa
They already do. For many years. To appear more authentic (due to source labels) and not put up with the public API limitations. Which is why this sort of change is just ridiculous, among other reasons.
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Replying to @wongmjane @elonmusk @BillyM2k @ericnakagawa
many of the malicious bots are already built on exploiting the existing client API, or in other words using an AI NOT meant for bot use. Basically it pretends to be a totally legitimate user through the way it interacts with the site. This change probably won't even hurt them.