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
You access twitter with the Twitter app, or through Twitter’s web page. They have provided you with a human-accessible interface to use their service.
Suppose you want to build a talking fish that every hour reads out the last tweet posted by your favorite celebrity. Your talking fish isn’t going to have a little guy inside, scrolling through the Twitter app, or the Twitter web page. Your talking fish needs some way of accessing Twitter that doesn’t require your fish to use the app, or a web page, or otherwise use fingers or eyes. It needs a way to access twitter programmatically.
Twitter doesn’t just provide a human interface to access its service. It also provides a means for your computer or other device to access the service directly. You can program the computer in your talking fish to access Twitter directly, download the latest tweet from your celebrity, and then convert it to speech and play it.
The interface Twitter provides for computers to access their service is the API.
The problem that Musk is (ostensibly) trying to solve is that the API doesn’t just allow bots to read twitter. It also allows them to post to twitter.
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