> Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things.
>Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.
If eliminating spam bots is the goal, a fairly nominal fee would likely suffice. $50/yr? That would be $5 million for the 100K spam bots.
Another datum: The person behind the robot that posts a picture of a possum every hour to Twitter has said:
"Hi All, I regret to announce you all that this bot will stop working on 9th of February (Next week) due to new Twitter's API policy. I have no intention on paying Twitter for basic API usage."
Recent events, including the freezing of API-accessed Twitter accounts in Japan that Anglophone news services didn't catch, and the disabling of Movetodon about half a day later, indicate that things will be happening sooner than the 9th.
A way to reduce bots that is sustainable for Twitter is to make the API limited and paid.
Clearly it is working and the free-loader bots are now crying; and they should cry and just pay for it. Just like there are little to no bots on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest.
> Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things.
>Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.
If eliminating spam bots is the goal, a fairly nominal fee would likely suffice. $50/yr? That would be $5 million for the 100K spam bots.
$1200 per year or more is punitive