Twitter delays API changes again

Photo: Edgar/Unsplash

Twitter is delaying the rollout of its paid API, with the company saying it needs more time to work on the redesign. It's not an indefinite delay, though, as Twitter mentioned "a few more days" delay. It was initially supposed to cut access to the free API on February 9. But that got pushed back to February 13 without warning. Twitter CEO Elon Musk hasn't said much about how the paid access to Twitter's API will work, but he suggested a charge of US$100 per month and an additional "ID verification" to limit bot abuse. The company later said it would allow "good bots" to tweet up to 1,500 times per month.

As Engadget pointed out, automated accounts and third-party clients aren't the only users affected by these changes. Researchers use the platform for different purposes. The recent one was around the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. Members of the Turkish diaspora used tweets to create heatmaps of where survivors could be located to share their findings with aid organizations and rescue crews. Musk's cost-cutting measures will affect use cases like this. When the API changes take effect, it will likely further slow down the work of data scientists and those involved in rescue efforts.