The news coming from Twitter is non-stop today.
One of the things that was a side effect of Elon Musk’s attempt to get people and companies to pay for Twitter’s API access is that emergency alerts such as weather alerts and public transit alerts would no longer be possible as those are generated by apps that used the Twitter API. That came to a head when the MTA which runs New York’s transit system said that it would reduce its presence on Twitter as a result.
Cue the u-turn by Twitter.
That’s vague as hell. What does “Verified gov or publicly owned services” mean precisely? Does that mean that these organizations need to pay Elon to get access to this? That’s a theory that The Verge is floating:
Exactly what the company means by “verified” is unclear. Does it only apply if the agency has enabled a new “verified” account, and do they have to pay to get checkmarks on any sub accounts that may require API access?
My belief is that this isn’t the end of this story. I fully expect that Elon will pull some sort of stunt to try and get paid somehow.