The IT Nerd

The latest attempt by Elon Musk to find a way for Twitter to make money is now coming in the form of this:

So Twitter is cutting off free API (Application Programming Interface) access, and instead wants to get paid for API access. Besides developers who use the Twitter API for scores of things such as tracking changes among Twitter accounts and offer alerts, researchers use the Twitter API to do things like track hate speech and misinformation. So besides the need of Elon to make money as fast as possible by charging for API access, the cynic in me wonders if he’s also trying to cut off access to Twitter so that it becomes much harder to see what a toxic cesspool Twitter has become since he took over. After all, the people who track this sort of stuff aren’t swimming in cash. Thus this would be a blow to them. But it would be great for Elon as stories about hate speech exploding on Twitter for example would drop. Then there’s the fact that the Twitter API is also used by the newsgathering service Dataminr to alert journalists to information that emerges on Twitter in real time. That really bad if you’re a New York Times, or a CNBC.

All of this comes after Twitter in the dark of night changed the rules so that third party clients were banned. Which means you have to wonder what is next from Elon. I guess we won’t have long to find out as there’s no evidence that Twitter hasn’t stopped bleeding cash. Which means that Elon will simply get more desperate to make money.

This entry was posted on February 2, 2023 at 8:13 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.