Twitter is effectively killing their API system and this has a lot of people confused as to what this means. Most important: Your Twitter account will still work. I’ve seen people saying Twitter will start to charge for regular Twitter use. No, that is far from the truth. What’s happening is people who use Twitter’s API system will now have to pay a minimum of $150/mo. As someone who uses Twitter’s API system I can actually break down what’s happening, and the effect it’ll have.
I feel most people are confused/worried because they don’t know what an API is. To break it down to its simplest form: An API allows developers to use a limited form Twitter’s backend to support their programs. APIs come in three forms. Twitter to an external service, external service to Twitter, or Twitter to Twitter. I’m aware this is still confusing for most people but I will break them down further with examples below.
Twitter to external sites is like my blog. You can login with your Twitter account to comment on my blog. The reason I use this API is so if I get hacked none of your info gets leaked. I’m going to go over security as a whole later. Another way to use Twitter to external sites is ease of use for users of Twitter. This is best shown off with Spotify using Facebook. With Spotify you can choose to make a Spotify account or login with a Facebook or Google account. This allows you to easily sign up for apps with the added benefit of not giving them your info, like my website. How many apps do you use that allow you to login with a form of social media? Almost every app I use lets me do that and it’s nice and safe. App devs don’t have to focus on security. The big companies who already focus on security will protect your data. This is not possible without APIs. If you use Twitter to login to a website/app you might no longer be able to do this due to these API price mandates.
External sites to Twitter are websites like Tweet Deleter, who followed, Gleem, or any other site where you login to them and they do something to your Twitter account. Yes, Tweet Deleter will stop working just because of these insanely high prices. This also includes stuff like YouTube posting when your video is finished or my auto Tweeting API for when I publish a blog post. YouTube will not get rid of their auto Tweet system, same with other big websites. They get good deals under enterprise pricing. So do not expect those to go down. However, smaller websites like mine? Those autopublish features will stop. Same with all those cool external websites which add features to Twitter. It’s possible stuff like Tweet Deck will go too. I say it’s possible because I am not sure if they make enough to cover the API costs. This could potentially affect Gleem giveaways too. You know when you enter a giveaway and it asks to verify you’re following the account on Twitter? That’s an external site to Twitter service using their API. I’m sure Gleem will still keep Twitter services on their giveaways but smaller services like this are more likely to stop using Twitter. If you’ve not noticed external sites to Twitter services can add features to Twitter the devs don’t want to add, mass deletion of Tweets, but is also used to drive engagement and content posted to Twitter.
Twitter to Twitter services are when you have bot/gimmick accounts like fuck everything, kittens every hour, court renderer, thread unroller, AI reply bots, the bot that posts a screenshot for the blocked, image distortion, and tons of other interesting accounts. Accounts like Pokedex Facts, fuck everything, (animal) every hour, and more run through Twitter’s internal API to post Tweets every so often. Thread roller, image distortion, make it a quote, court render, and many more also use these services to make Twitter more readable and enjoyable for users. Many people focus on the ones that just post something every hour instead of the helpful bots on Twitter. Like the one that finds and credits artists on images randomly posted on Twitter. This is a fantastic service for artists and Twitter. Not only does this give artists exposure and credit for their work but it encourages users to interact with each other and keep posting on Twitter by discovering new artists to follow. For every annoying meme bot account there is a very useful service bot that drastically drives up engagement for the site.
Some people are saying that this is for security. However, the opposite is true. APIs make Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and tons of other services safer. Before people would scrape sites by making their own login systems that would then scrape the original service’s information and use that to make your account. This is horribly unsafe. During this time you were essentially giving all of these random websites and mini-apps full access to your accounts. Almost anytime someone’s been hacked on social media it’s because they’re using a scraping service instead of an API service. API services keep your information secret from us. When you login with Twitter to comment on my website I just see your email address as (twitterhandle)@twitter.com and your name is listed as your Twitter Display name. I don’t get access to a password or any bit of information past that. This is because APIs keep you secure. I get none of your information and neither do hackers if they hack my site.
The same is true for external sites that access Twitter. Twitter’s API system stops them from accessing information you don’t give them access to, and certain information entirely. You can also go into your account settings and remove their access without an issue. If we still had to use the old scraping method then you have to trust the site you used would delete your information. If not they’d always have full access to your account until you changed your password. If people still wish to use Twitter for external services it’s possible we’ll go back to scraping. Which will open Twitter users up to tons of threats. If a service you used was hacked now hackers would get your password as well as all information they scraped for you.
To those that think this will help with spam bots. Sorry, it won’t. Spam bots already break the TOS for every API on the market. They just ban the accounts. Not only that, spam bots make too many requests to use a free tier. Spam bots would need a premium, and possibly enterprise tier. Spam bots work by abusing the scraping method above. You scrape in some information and use an infected modem/computer/router or even a host spam computer to run scripts and spam like crazy. As far as Twitter can tell these people are logging in via normal means. The only bots you get rid of are the helpful bots that drive engagement to Twitter, not away from it.
Speaking of driving engagement to Twitter. APIs do that constantly. One of the main reasons people keep their Facebook accounts is so they can login to tons of apps without making an account. Which then makes a person’s Facebook account more useful to them. They’re more likely to keep a Facebook account and use it due to its importance for logging into apps. One of Twitter’s biggest failings has been their API systems. You can’t use Twitter’s APIs to login to certain apps which lowers the use cases of a Twitter account. Which means people are less likely to have one. Before you bring up the amount of accounts Twitter has: A lot of those are API bots, banned, or ban evasion accounts. Twitter doesn’t delete banned accounts and keeps them to falsely boost their account totals. Not only that I know too many people who are on like their 10th ban evasion account because they get banned so often. This isn’t even getting into people with multiple accounts for art, porn, personal use, and tons of other reasons. Twitter needs all the help it can get to drive engagement. Which is what these accounts do. You can look at all the gimmick accounts and see their high engagement numbers. People want to engage with these accounts which means it is keeping people on Twitter. Which increases the value of Twitter’s ads.
APIs are also why Facebook ads are worth so much. As I said before, people keep their Facebook accounts to login to many different apps. This actually drives up the value of a Facebook account and it’s one of the reasons why Facebook is valued so highly. Every Facebook account isn’t just data being collected via Facebook posts but also data being collected via API logins. Yes, APIs can be used by their company to collect your data and sell it to advertisers to make more money. This means whenever someone posts a comment on my website via Twitter that information is collected by Twitter for that user. It lets them harvest data for data they don’t host.
Yeah that’s right. Outside of the connection and initial linking of APIs Twitter doesn’t use any of their data for APIs that are hosted on external services. If you comment on my website through a Twitter account it is hosted on my website. I control what happens to the comment, not Twitter. Twitter just gets to keep a copy if they wish. That initial linking of information is less data being used on Twitter’s servers than if you loaded their website and logged off. Which means there’s zero reason to charge us this much for API requests. $150 for 500 requests a month. That means if I pay $150 a month then I could only process 500 comments from Twitter a month on my website, if I disabled auto publishing. Every time I auto publish an article that’s one less comment someone could make. With services like Tweet Deleter they get tons of requests a month. Hell possibly an hour. Same with these bots that drive engagement to Twitter. The service accounts like Tweet Deck, Tweet Deleter, friends circle, and more are things people like to do that bring either enjoyment or a much needed feature to Twitter. Making the service better and Twitter doesn’t have to pay for anything. They just reap the benefits of an improved user experience for existing. With the bot accounts people like I will always see ads under those posts and usually lots of comments. That’s now gone. That’s tons of ad engagements gone overnight to “save data”. An API posting a Tweet is less data used then if you or I were to Tweet. This also isn’t even getting into the fact that Twitter’s APIs are the worst out there. Facebook and Google’s free APIs are better than Twitter’s. When comparing premium APIs it ain’t even close. Twitter’s really far behind everyone else when it comes to API development and has been left to rot since Musk took over.
A lot of API devs who used to make stuff only for Twitter have started to move to other social media platforms. Some say they’re getting more use from Mastodon users then Twitter users now, despite Twitter being the bigger platform. These API devs will just move on after this. I’m sure a few will pay the $150/mo but it won’t be worth it. Losing $150/mo only to be told to pay more to get more requests from starved users is just going to drain you. Especially since no one will pay for these services on Twitter. Which is just going to result in Twitter’s value dropping even more. One of Twitter’s main investors, Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund, is upset and has said that the site lost over half of its value before December was even finished and since then Twitter has only gotten worse.
Do I think this will kill Twitter? No. The average person will just complain about the site getting worse and then argue amongst each other. It will kill the value of a Twitter user account when compared to the value of other social media accounts, and yes advertisers value specific websites accounts above others. This might cause more advertisers to flee, or demand better pricing. An area where Twitter isn’t really in the room to negotiate in their favor. This is just another thing advertisers can use to devalue Twitter even more. Especially if it shows tons of accounts are now abandoned API bots. That means if this gets overturned and free API functions are returned Musk has already opened Pandora’s box for advertisers to question the legitimacy of total real users and posts.