Dan Morse doesn’t know what to do with his popular Twitter account, @would_it_donga Twitter bot with over 179,000 followers that measures the distance of home runs and runs if they would be considered home runs at other major league ballparks.
Morse is one of several developers who are in limbo after Twitter said last week that it would start charging people like him to automate accounts on the platform. And while the idea of bots now often conjures up notions of nefarious state-based disinformation campaigns, many bots like Morse’s are labors of love that generate no revenue.
Morse said people had reached out to him suggesting he try fundraising for the account, but he had little desire to go that route.
“I would really rather this bot cost no one anything,” Morse said.
The initial announcement about Twitter’s change to its API, short for application programming interface, came on Thursday when The Twitter developer account tweeted that access would no longer be free. The same account also announced that pricing for a tiered payment system will be released this Thursday.
A viral screenshot of an older pricing structure quickly sparked a mixture of shock, outrage, and resignation from the developers.
Some raised their concerns directly with Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk, who said the current API was being abused by “bot scammers and opinion manipulators”. Two days later, Musk, in response to concerns from an account that tracks the whereabouts of a catsaid he would change the new rules.
“In response to feedback, Twitter will enable a lightweight, write-only API for bots delivering good free content,” Musk tweeted on Saturday. While this brings some relief, the vague nature of “good content” still leaves a lot in the dark.
Many automated accounts rely on Twitter’s API to operate, which allows a developer to write a program that automatically interacts with the platform. Twitter launched its API in 2006inviting users to suggest ways to create bots that may be of interest to users.
Now the developers have created a wide range of accounts that post everything from emergency notice For Lyrics by Taylor Swift. Many developers and groups behind these accounts have said that charging for API access could mean they are unable to run their bots.
“If this change takes place, we will no longer be able to broadcast emergency notifications via Twitter,” tweeted the Cumberland Goodwill EMS, which provides service to an area of over 63,000 people in central Pennsylvania.
Bill Snitzer, a Los Angeles-based developer behind the EQBOT service that provides earthquake information for the Los Angeles and San Francisco area as well as global earthquakes greater than magnitude 5.0, said each of the five bots in his service had his own Twitter page and following. Snitzer was able to monetize his services, earning a small sum through an Amazon affiliate link. However, he said the API price was “kind of a slap in the face.”
“It’s about the release of important information that could potentially go missing,” said Snitzer, who built the bots more than 10 years ago. “I kind of have to pay money, and I don’t like it. It’s kind of an uncomfortable ethical dilemma.
For researchers, the free API guarantees access to vital data. Sol Messing, an associate professor at the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, said his work relies heavily on the Twitter API to gather insights into how social media platforms are used. Messing said he expects Twitter’s API pricing to heavily affect his plans, slowing research and making it harder to coordinate with other research groups.
“You really need third-party analysis on social media platforms to guard against potential harm to society,” Messing said.
On Monday morning, the nonpartisan Coalition for Independent Technology Research released a letter calling on Twitter to “ensure that APIs for studying public content on the platform remain easily accessible.”
Both Morse and Snitzer have floated the idea of moving their services from Twitter to Mastodon, a decentralized social networking site, although the two have yet to make the move.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com
