In the middle of the night, Twitter made an announcement that disappointed a wide range of developers whose research, bots, and apps depend on free access to the platform’s API to function. Twitter announced in a tweet that starting on February 9, Twitter “will no longer support free access to the Twitter API.” Instead, many developers will have to either pay to access public data or abruptly shut down their projects.
Twitter has not yet shared how much its new “paid basic tier” will cost, and the company has only vaguely promised “more details on what you can expect next week.” Thousands of small developers may have to shut down free tools like @ThreadReaderApp or @RemindMe_ofThis, the Verge reported, impacting hundreds of thousands of followers who rely on small developers to build tools that help maximize their engagement with the platform.
Entrepreneur and developer Tom Coates joined many developers protesting Twitter’s announcement. Coates tweeted that, while “it is not unreasonable to want to find a way to charge those developers who extract more value than they contribute” to Twitter, “one week’s notice and no indication of pricing shows Twitter is chaotic and unreliable. No one’s going to build a business on that.”
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