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
In: 419
API or Application Programming Interface is kind of like a digital menu over the types of data a company or service offers. Basically when you are using the reddit app on your phone or the twitter app they are accessing the api to get the feed from the reddit server.
It sounds more complicated than it actually is. One example is if you want to get the comments for this post. Then you ask the reddit api to bring you the comments for /r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10rnu6s/eli5_how_does_an_api_work/ and the api will return a list of data which each consists of a comment, a parent comment, a username, number of up/downvotes, awards and the time it was last posted and the time it was last edited as a little form. And repeats this form for each comment of this thread.
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