Some of them share traffic violations or simple photos of every NYC address. Others track secret payments or Wikipedia edits made by the NYPD. Perhaps the most important among them tells New Yorkers when to move their cars for street sweeping.
But all these automated Twitter accounts could shut down Monday, Feb. 13, as the company ends its free access to the social media platform’s backend, known as its application programming interface, or API. Researchers, developers and local governments have used the Twitter API for years to study social networks, share emergency updates and inject a bit of fun and spontaneity into otherwise dull and adversarial Twitter feeds.
Twitter had originally planned to cut access Thursday but extended the deadline in a last-minute thread Wednesday night. In that thread, officials said users will now need to pay $100 monthly for “low level” API usage, and they provided details on a carveout for bots providing “good content” that CEO Elon Musk suggested last week. The carveout would limit free API access to 1,500 tweets per month for a single user. That’s only about two tweets per hour, which could hinder developers with multiple bots or ones that provide regular updates on city life.
“I don’t know why one of the world’s richest men is desperate to squeeze every penny out of this company and strangle it in the process,” said John Emerson, a designer and developer who created @NYPDedits and @NYPDPDna (NYPD Secret Vendors) as well as a number of bots that randomly tweet exhibits from NYC museums. “I’m definitely not going to be paying for access for my little free toys, so they’ll probably just die.”
The news is also chilling for academics, said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology watchdog. Right now, Twitter offers API access to researchers with specific projects in mind, but it’s unclear whether that tier will survive the policy change. Even with the “good bot” carveout, they wouldn’t be able to conduct their research, which requires them to bulk-download massive numbers of tweets.
“It’s going to be a real danger to lose that kind of information,” he said, noting that some researchers use the API to track misinformation on the platform. “Without that kind of access, people will have to rely on what Twitter says, and that shouldn’t be the only source of information.”
Twitter bots like @TurboVax were instrumental in the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in New York City, when demand was high and it was hard to find an appointment. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers used the tool to receive notifications about newly available vaccine appointments.
TurboVax creator Huge Ma criticized the Twitter policy change.
“It's a fundamental miscalculation of the social contract of bots and Twitter in general,” he said in an email to Gothamist, noting that Twitter was already making money off the bots because they attract users to the platform.
I don’t want my bots to be on the same platform that has a hard time banning Nazis.
“Twitter didn't pay me or any other helpful bot creators a single cent,” Ma added. “But that was fine because we helped a whole lot of people. That's all that mattered.”
Twitter’s decision isn’t the only recent blow to bot tinkerers. Yechiel Kalmenson, a software engineer by day and bot creator by night, was unable to maintain his alternate side parking Twitter bot starting in December after Heroku, a cloud platform where developers can run applications, abolished its free service tier.
Kalmenson noted that only people who can afford the paid tiers will be able to keep their bots alive, so the survivors will be less artistic and more corporate.
“People who make money will be OK spending it to make more back,” he said. “All the fun bots, the ones that create content that people enjoy, all these fun little integrations, those are the ones that will die.”
Some creators are planning to take their local bots to Mastodon, a collection of microblogging servers that has replaced Twitter for some users. One server, botsin.space, is purpose-built for tinkerers to create automated accounts. Neil Freeman, whose bots document raw sewage overflows into NYC waterways and Google Street View pictures of every lot in the city, said Twitter has become increasingly hostile to creative projects.
“Recently, Twitter has become a less pleasant place to be,” Freeman said. “I don’t want my bots to be on the same platform that has a hard time banning Nazis.”
It’s less clear what will happen to city-run Twitter feeds like @NYCASP, which alerts followers to the status of alternate-side parking days. The city’s Office of Technology and Innovation didn’t return requests for comment. It’s not even clear which city agency is responsible for the account — neither the sanitation department nor the transportation department claimed it as their own following an inquiry from Gothamist.
This story was updated with the news that Twitter extended free access to its API and comments from the sanitation and transportation departments.
