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mjg59In one week from now, Twitter will block free API access. This prevents anyone who has written interesting bot accounts, integrations, or tooling from accessing Twitter without paying for it. A whole number of fascinating accounts will cease functioning, people will no longer be able to use tools that interact with Twitter, and anyone using a free service to do things like find Twitter mutuals who have moved to Mastodon or to cross-post between Twitter and other services will be blocked.
There's a cynical interpretation to this, which is that despite firing 75% of the workforce Twitter is still not profitable and Elon is desperate to not have Twitter go bust and also not to have to tank even more of his Tesla stock to achieve that. But let's go with the less cynical interpretation, which is that API access to Twitter is something that enables bot accounts that make things worse for everyone. Except, well, why would a hostile bot account do that?
To interact with an API you generally need to present some sort of authentication token to the API to prove that you're allowed to access it. It's easy enough to restrict issuance of those tokens to people who pay for the service. But, uh, how do the apps work? They need to be able to communicate with the service to tell it to post tweets, retrieve them, and so on. And the simple answer to that is that they use some hardcoded authentication tokens. And while registering for an API token yourself identifies that you're not using an official client, using the tokens embedded in the clients makes it look like you are. If you want to make it look like you're a human, you're already using tokens ripped out of the official clients.
The Twitter client API keys are widely known. Anyone who's pretending to be a human is using those already and will be unaffected by the shutdown of the free API tier. Services like movetodon.org do get blocked. This isn't an anti-abuse choice. It's one that makes it harder to move to other services. It's one that blocks a bunch of the integrations and accounts that bring value to the platform. It's one that hurts people who follow the rules, without hurting the ones who don't. This isn't an anti-abuse choice, it's about trying to consolidate control of the platform.
There's a cynical interpretation to this, which is that despite firing 75% of the workforce Twitter is still not profitable and Elon is desperate to not have Twitter go bust and also not to have to tank even more of his Tesla stock to achieve that. But let's go with the less cynical interpretation, which is that API access to Twitter is something that enables bot accounts that make things worse for everyone. Except, well, why would a hostile bot account do that?
To interact with an API you generally need to present some sort of authentication token to the API to prove that you're allowed to access it. It's easy enough to restrict issuance of those tokens to people who pay for the service. But, uh, how do the apps work? They need to be able to communicate with the service to tell it to post tweets, retrieve them, and so on. And the simple answer to that is that they use some hardcoded authentication tokens. And while registering for an API token yourself identifies that you're not using an official client, using the tokens embedded in the clients makes it look like you are. If you want to make it look like you're a human, you're already using tokens ripped out of the official clients.
The Twitter client API keys are widely known. Anyone who's pretending to be a human is using those already and will be unaffected by the shutdown of the free API tier. Services like movetodon.org do get blocked. This isn't an anti-abuse choice. It's one that makes it harder to move to other services. It's one that blocks a bunch of the integrations and accounts that bring value to the platform. It's one that hurts people who follow the rules, without hurting the ones who don't. This isn't an anti-abuse choice, it's about trying to consolidate control of the platform.
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no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 12:45 pm (UTC)The key point here will be what is the price that will required to pay for access to the api. The one point missing in your discussion is this, it may not be principally about bots and abuse, but revenues.
Cash is life, and if it helps kill a few bots — could be the calculus at play.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-03 01:29 pm (UTC)Clarification
Date: 2023-02-02 01:40 pm (UTC)As a non native English speaker, it took me a couple of rereads to figure out what you meant. I guess that if you said 'Twitter's [official] apps' instead of 'the apps' or 'the clients', it would have been easier. Notably, the third mention ('the official clients') is was let me understand the rest.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 02:32 pm (UTC)The two companies would have to negotiate a price for access to the api. I would suspect that ifttt already pays for access — so there may not be an impact.
It's about disrupting chains of influence.
Date: 2023-02-02 04:08 pm (UTC)Re: It's about disrupting chains of influence.
Date: 2023-02-02 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 06:39 pm (UTC)Sure would be nice if we had a fully-decentralized Twitter-like protocol.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-02 06:58 pm (UTC)After being on ssb since 2017 — I would consider « fully decentralized » as a pipe dream.
The level of decentralization that mastodon has achieved is suitable for five-nines percent of users.