Snippet: Twitter to Begin Charging for API Access ☇

I’ve mentally moved on from Twitter (personal and the accounts for this site are basically just redirects to other places), but this is an important one for much of the Internet—free API access is going away on February 9. The major change on short notice from the Twitter Dev account:

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead.

Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week.

Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.

We’ll be back with more details on what you can expect next week.

There’s no other information with *checks notes* only a week to go. Although third-party clients have been gone for awhile, this will most likely kill automated posting tools. That’s been used for years on this site and it’s just not worth the money to pay for API access. It’s also a pretty bold move for Twitter to think that publications, especially smaller ones, should pay to generate content for their site even if it ultimately brings eyeballs to the destination sites. In addition to that, tools that allow you to delete your tweets or create things outside of simple posting will also go away. If I ran an app or service that used Log in with Twitter, I’d also start thinking about moving away from it. With the way Twitter has treated everyone lately, I don’t think many will want to “continue to build with” them.

I’ve already pulled the cross-posting for this site from Twitter, so if you want to keep tabs on new content, there’s some alternatives.