Twitter recently announced they will no longer support free access to the Twitter API. Everyone seems up in arms about it and I can’t figure out what an API even is. What would doing something like this actually affect?
I’ve tried looking up what an API is, but I can’t really wrap my head around it.
Edit: I’ve had so many responses to read through and there’s been a ton of helpful explanations! Much appreciated everyone 🙂 thanks for keeping this doofus in the know
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One of the reasons why it sucks is because their API works really well as an example for how to interact with web-based APIs as a whole. Pretty much everyone knows what a “Tweet” is, so it’s really easy to come up with examples of how to use different technologies along with APIs. I’ve used it myself in my professional life for proofs-of-concept for data pipelines, enterprise service buses, authentication, and probably a dozen other things that I can’t think of right now.
If I had to guess, I would say that they’re getting rid of it because of all the bots who use it. It’s pretty easy to write a little script which uses Twitter’s API to listen for new tweets and automatically respond to them. I used to have a bot running that would read out loud any of Donald Trump’s tweets as soon as they went out, but others use them for more nefarious purposes.
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