Elon Musk continues to make changes that affect the Twitter community
Since last year we have shared here on the blog notes about the events that have occurred from Elon Musk's interest in Twitter, to some of the changes made to the platform and most of which have upset many and many. It seems that Elon Musk's intentions are totally in a different direction from what he painted.
And it is that nowa Elon Musk is making sure no one gets access to Twitter data for free, as evidenced by their recent repression against academic researchers, since by email they have received information about the changes that have been made to the API data access.
At email received by researchers the tech billionaire, has warned all researchers who have accessed the application data in the past delete all the information they have. To do this, he gave them an ultimatum of one month. And if they want to keep accessing the data, they won't do it for free. Instead, they will have to pay a certain amount each month.
For some time, we've seen many such researchers reach out to apps like Twitter to help regulate the current disinformation crisis, as well as issues around hate speech and the spread of false information. Therefore, Twitter has decided to implement a new API, called Decahose.
This API allowed researchers to get massive data and get 10% of all messages of the app on a daily basis, which could be obtained for a fee of $200 per month, while for some it was free.
However Musk was not happy and, in the recent past, we have seen that the platform significantly increased the prices of the APIs, which really upset the companies and researchers who were involved in the interest of the application.
In February of this year, news broke about another major delay in the implementation of Twitter's price gouging policy, and if you wanted data, you had to pay for it. Some users, including major clients like WordPress, have been asked to pay a fee each month, causing them to go back and leave the app.
Over time things continued to get worse as the app gave the API an edge in the "emergency" category by waiving the fee, but this is an exceptional case as many people were resentful and upset with the new Musk's policy.
Shockingly, academic researchers have to pay $42.000 a month to access only 0,3% of all articles published daily. Meanwhile, the researchers concluded that the company would force them to post screenshots showing the deletion of data.
It is important to mention that such claims were also part of the contract when the researchers signed the Decahose. But as with other elements, integral components like scrutiny and transparency have not been as well received as before.
To better understand Twitter's "incomprehensible" decision, it should be noted that when the network provided its API for free, researchers, academics, companies, and organizations had access to 1% of all tweets on the platform. Now that they have to pay, the smaller plan gives them access to just 0,3% of monthly tweet output, which means it's far from a complete snapshot of activity on the platform.
To invest more than half a million dollars in an API it is essential to have a return on investment. Such a budget is not within the reach of all companies, much less researchers or academics.
This series of decisions has led to the fact that not everyone can find solutions (financial or technical) that give them access to the Twitter APIs, so it could be counterproductive, since many users could switch to other platforms, despite the fact that currently the network is widely used by journalists, high-ranking politicians and decision makers, for many, the costs are out of the question.