TOIPs might not sound like the sexiest thing to write about in a tech newsletter, but bear with me. Because APIs, or application programming interfaces, are important. They are the synapses of our digital world: without them, our current way of life would not work.
For example, when you visit a website that requires you to sign in and choose to connect with a Google or Facebook account, you are using an API. That click of a button that links your existing account on one platform to a new account on another is enabled by an API. They spring into action whenever one type of work interacts with another, working to close that gap. APIs are the overlooked and underappreciated army that keep the internet as we know it.
Starting Thursday, many of those features will disappear from Twitter as its API is hidden behind a paywall. The company announced last week that it was removing free access to your API.
“The latest set of changes to Twitter will likely mean the end of some of your favorite accounts, tools and features, as platform owner Elon Musk continues to look for ways to increase revenue,” The Guardian reported. Those tools include services like thread readerthat unrolls Twitter threads into easy-to-digest formats, and @EarthquakeBotthat tracks weather events and natural disasters like earthquakes, as well as tools that big brands use for their customer services.
The importance of APIs
“APIs are an area full of competitive tensions,” says Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert and professor at the University of Surrey. “Probably the most sensational failure was when Facebook allowed the survey ultimately used by Cambridge Analytica to collect sensitive data about users and their friends.” On Twitter, API access was more “benign,” says Woodward, mostly limited to posting through third-party apps that allow for an element of automation.
Perhaps most worryingly, the change in API access spells the end of academic research using Twitter. For example, a recent scholarly article discussing all the activity in a single day on Twitter it would not be possible now without paying for access. It’s also a wake-up call. says researcher Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, for the public to prove that their data can be monetized in ways they have no control over. “The research community in my field has always relied on access to data from the very platforms they purport to study, which is an intolerable situation for independent research and is now even more pronounced,” he says.
Woodward puts it this way: “APIs are very important to Twitter researchers… if you cut off this access, some of the transparency provided by outside researchers is likely to go away.”
The measure will also affect applications and services that use Twitter. “People find useful tools or services that build on it, academics use it for data, businesses use it to connect with customers,” says Kate Bevan, a longtime technology writer who believes the API shift from Musk is significant, and bad news. Bevan is also the human behind @DaphneFlap, a Twitter bot that relies on API access for its existence, posts a photograph of the cat flap through which a cat named Daphne jumps through whenever motion is detected. “We take APIs for granted.”
Musk’s prevarications
The API change has been almost universally criticized, which may explain why Elon Musk has decided to backtrack, more or less. 5th February, tweeted that “Twitter will enable a lightweight write-only API for bots that provide good content that is free.”
It is not known what exactly constitutes “good content”. It allegedly does not include @ElonJet, an account that used automated API interactions between publicly available flight tracking data and Twitter to post the flight times and locations of Musk’s private jet, an action the businessman called “murder in real time”. -ordered”. (@ElonJet was banned in December 2022.) “I can’t help but conclude that this move came about because some of the fun bots have irritated people in high places,” says Woodward.
The “good content” according to Musk could be more like @PepitoTheCat, a Twitter account that also take a picture every time a cat named Pepito passes through his owners’ cat flap: after all, Musk’s volatile face happened in response to pleas from the owner of that account that Musk’s policy change would “kill” his profile.
But the change, as well as being alarming, also highlights a contradiction in Musk’s goals for Twitter. He has heavily promoted the Twitter archives during his time at the company’s helm: a cache of internal documents, selectively released to journalists with whom he has existing relationships, containing information he says proves the platform before he outside owner made an opaque decision. -Elaboration of key policies. However, by saying that he will exempt people who create “good content” from API limitations and charges, he is perpetuating the same problem. He tackles a problem he says he sought to buy Twitter to solve: his plethora of bots, which he felt were diminishing the value of actual human interactions on the site. But he could exacerbate another problem that he said was important enough to buy the platform for $44 billion in the first place.
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Musk is introducing a lack of transparency and editorializing on what had been a simple proposition: Anyone who wanted access to the Twitter API could get it for free. Now, it depends on whether they produce content that appeals to your whims.
It is yet another example of the dangers of semi-public platforms controlled by individuals. And an example of the impact removing or revoking access to a relatively unknown Internet backbone can have on everyday users.
The Widest TechScape
India, which has led the way in banning weapons applications in its battle against China, has announced plans to ban 232 apps of Chinese origin. There’s a precedent for this: In June 2020, India banned TikTok, along with 58 other apps of Chinese origin. The bans are likely motivated by more than general suspicion of Chinese technology: India has an ongoing border dispute with China and views tactical tech bans as a weapon similar to sanctions against the country.
Generative AI is getting even more powerful, as the duo behind the AI-generated Seinfeld parody Nothing, Forever, which streamed live on Twitch, tried to demonstrate. As you’d expect from AI-generated work, there were more misses than hits: the stream was eventually banned after transphobic and homophobic jokes.
