[HN Gopher] Twitter's $42k-per-month API prices out nearly everyone
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Twitter's $42k-per-month API prices out nearly everyone
Author : danso
Score : 162 points
Date : 2023-03-10 20:09 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| jmercouris wrote:
| Nothing new. It has been prohibitively expensive and cumbersome
| to get Twitter data for years, even for research as an
| Institution.
| altdataseller wrote:
| False. You could search thru and consume almost 5-10% of all
| tweets for free with the free API provided you had enough user
| tokens.
|
| Of course if you paid the full firehose, it would be much more
| expensive
| jmercouris wrote:
| I don't know what you mean about it being false. If you
| circumvent the API license by making tons of tokens and
| connecting from different IPs it is possible- much in the
| same way that a bank has free money if you rob it.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Twitter also used to suspend API keys seemingly at random,
| making research data on Twitter nearly impossible.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Any idea how much this compares to previous prices?
| secos wrote:
| The last time I talked to Twitter sales (about 2 years ago)
| they were asking for 6k/mo.
| hn2017 wrote:
| That is false.
| https://twitter.com/stokel/status/1634310536723668995?s=20
| graupel wrote:
| This sounds like pricing used to be for the Twitter Firehose - so
| expensive (and so, so much data to wrangle)
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's only a few hundred MB per second.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Anyone who wants to do research will just end up using Twitter's
| data from non official sources. Last I checked web scraping and
| using undocumented but public APIs used in web/apps is still
| legal.0
|
| Ex: Nitter operates without official APIs.
| mbStavola wrote:
| Verified was also going to be $20/mo, I'm sure businesses and
| researchers are just going to wait it out until the price drops.
| bydo wrote:
| So we just need Stephen King to chime in again?
|
| Edit for context:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144
| codetrotter wrote:
| Idk. Context?
| beeskneecaps wrote:
| https://twitter.com/stephenking/status/1587042605627490304
| and subsequently
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144
| theFletch wrote:
| There's a blue check by his name now, so...
| mbStavola wrote:
| So... nothing?
|
| If you click on his checkmark it tells you that he's a
| legacy verified account and does NOT pay for Twitter
| Blue.
| theFletch wrote:
| Sorry, I guess I thought Musk had already removed legacy
| checks. The whole thing seems a little silly. King
| obviously doesn't need Twitter, but I'm sure he receives
| more value out of Twitter than $8/mo even so (or whatever
| they're charging now).
| darkarmani wrote:
| I'm sure Twitter gets more value out of King than
| $8/month.
| theFletch wrote:
| I'm sure they do, but wasn't that also a part of Twitter
| Blue, a revenue share, or have they not followed through
| with that either?
| Hamuko wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23623927/twitter-blue-
| ad-r...
| codetrotter wrote:
| Seems like and interesting research problem. Too bad the
| researchers won't be able to afford the API access cost
| to research things like this ;)
| jackson1442 wrote:
| But accounts like his are what _drives_ people to
| Twitter. I already left months ago, but I'd definitely be
| leaving if the company that profits off of me wants to
| charge me for the privilege.
| [deleted]
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| Twitter sells user eyeballs to advertisers. The user's
| are there to look at posts from people like King.
|
| I'm sure pre-Musk Twitter got far more than $8/mo out of
| King posting on the site.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| ...we don't know what that means.
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| Hilarious to see a half-billionaire complain about 20 bucks a
| month.
| croes wrote:
| He isn't complaining about the 20 bucks but the
| subscription as such.
|
| Twitter needs celebreties more than celebreties need a blue
| check mark
| Finnucane wrote:
| He knows he's worth more than that to Twitter.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Given that Twitter data has been becoming less valuable due to
| recent events, I don't think Twitter has as much leverage to
| raise the price, even for businesses specializing in such data.
| choward wrote:
| What recent events? Why would their data be less valuable?
| jsemrau wrote:
| Maybe this > https://gizmodo.com/meta-p92-twitter-clone-
| decentralized-mas...
|
| META might go on attack mode.
| hn2017 wrote:
| A disservice to researchers out there. Musk is willing to let
| misinformation and extremism run rampant
| KomoD wrote:
| https://archive.ph/mxifu
| noonething wrote:
| so scraping then?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I'm surprised that nobody has noticed that the price was set at
| 42k because it's another one of Musk's 420 (aka weed) jokes, and
| not because of any specific data showing that is the optimal
| price point for this offering.
| jacobedawson wrote:
| ...Blackburn, however, says researchers will continue to find a
| way to scrutinize what's happening on Twitter. "We've been mostly
| cut off from Facebook for years and we've continued to make
| progress," he says. "It's not like science is going to be held
| hostage by a guy that played himself into burning $44 billion on
| a website that makes no money, just so he could force all its
| users to read his shitposts."
| user3939382 wrote:
| I figured he spent the money to uncover the illegal collusion
| going on between Twitter, Congress, and our three letter
| agencies (which is the subject of an ongoing congressional
| inquiry). Or how it was used to rig the election for Biden.
| ModernMech wrote:
| No, he spent the money so people would think that's what he's
| doing. All we need to know he's not _actually_ doing this is
| to see that his handpick journalists are ignoring evidence of
| the Trump White House asking Twitter to remove posts.
|
| If the FBI flagging posts to be removed is government
| weaponization of Twitter, then the White House doing the same
| must be as well, to an even more egregious degree. And yet
| crickets from Musk.
|
| If he's only releasing and reacting to one side, then we must
| conclude the entire "Twitter Files" is simply a right wing,
| partisan messaging campaign.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| The white house wasn't even doing the same. The fbi was
| pointing out tweets that violated Twitter's rules and
| suggesting that they evaluate them but that it was totally
| up to Twitter about what to do. The white house was
| pointing out tweets that embarrassed or otherwise hurt
| Trump's feelings and demanding that Twitter take them down
| user3939382 wrote:
| > The FBI was pointing out
|
| There were literally FBI spooks working at Twitter
| managing their censorship
| MBCook wrote:
| At this point it seems far more likely he was scared of
| discovery and penalties in the Twitter lawsuit over him
| trying to back out of the deal.
|
| Not sure why. He's lost SO MUCH MONEY and reputation seems
| like he'd have been better off not going through with the
| purchase.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| I don't think that the FBI recommending that Twitter look
| into posts that both break Twitter rules and were suspected
| of being generated by foreign operatives counts as illegal
| collusion.
|
| I also don't think Twitter was the deciding factor in Biden
| winning, and the election certainly wasn't rigged.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| [flagged]
| mehlmao wrote:
| What was censored under Dorsey that isn't censored under
| Musk?
| sneak wrote:
| The Twitter Files come to mind.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > maybe they're doing it because their political ideology
|
| I can't speak for anyone but myself, but my attitude about
| this has nothing to do with politics.
| officeplant wrote:
| >their political ideology demands purity
|
| I wasn't aware Musk had one.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Of course he doesn't, he just endorses republicans,
| selectively leaks information to help them, and attacks
| their enemies.
|
| If that's not the model of neutrality, then nothing is.
| slg wrote:
| It is possible to criticize Musk and his management of
| Twitter for completely apolitical reasons. You have to be a
| sycophant to describe his management style as anything other
| than chaotic. There are literally employees at the company
| who don't have any work because there is no one to assign
| them to a department or team. There are people who don't even
| know if they work there anymore because the layoffs were
| handled so poorly. It goes way beyond Musk's opinions on free
| speech or whatever political opinion you want to blame. The
| whole purchase has clearly been a train wreck up until this
| point.
| starik36 wrote:
| Yes, it's possible. But saying "guy that played himself
| into burning $44 billion on a website that makes no money,
| just so he could force all its users to read his shitposts"
| isn't the way. It just reveals their biases.
| devjab wrote:
| Is it? I'm not on Twitter and I'm Danish so I'm not
| really caught up on American identity politics, outside
| of what you hear online, but is that really revealing any
| bias of that sort? It sounds like someone who has a
| dislike for Musk, but really, I think this could be said
| about most of the billionaires running social media
| platforms from a certain point of view.
|
| I think we should still put a lot of the blame on
| ourselves, but really, our political institutions
| shouldn't be on these centralized social medias if you
| ask me. They should be running their own instances of
| something like mastodon, so that it's not an American
| tech company that gets to moderate Danish politicians.
| Which isn't really a right or left leaning point of view
| where I come from.
|
| Frankly saying that Musk burnt $44 billion on a website
| that makes no money could also just being laughing at the
| whole situation. I think it's been sort of hilarious to
| follow, but being Danish, we do have a nice tradition for
| enjoying watching successful people fail. That being
| said, you may also be right, but I think it's a bit of
| stretch to boil this down to political bias of the sort,
| because there is frankly a bunch of reasons to laugh at
| twitter right now that have nothing to do with politics.
| scott_w wrote:
| It's biased to make a statement of fact?
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Statements of facts are biased when they hurt the
| feelings of people who refuse to accept them.
| slg wrote:
| I don't know, that seems to be the apolitical reading of
| the situation. Is there something specific you object to
| in that quote?
|
| >guy that played himself into burning $44 billion
|
| That seems unquestionable. Twitter wasn't worth that
| price when he actually took control or he wouldn't have
| tried so hard to get out of the deal. It is impossible to
| put an accurate value on Twitter today, but it seems
| obvious that its value has gone down even further under
| Musk's leadership.
|
| >a website that makes no money
|
| Maybe hyperbolic depending on your definition of "makes
| no money", but it hasn't turned a profit in years so it
| is fair to categorize it as "a website that makes no
| money".
|
| >just so he could force all its users to read his
| shitposts
|
| Maybe you object to the "just" there and he had other
| reasons to make the purchase, but this general accusation
| seems true[1]. He is at least partially motivated by
| vanity and getting other people to read his weird jokes.
|
| [1] - https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/14/23600358/elon-
| musk-tweets...
| jareds wrote:
| Other then the term "shitposts" what's wrong with that
| statement? They did make updates to give him and only him
| a broader reach and more views. The only reason I say
| "shitposts" may be an issue with the statement is because
| I don't feel like seeing if there's a definition for
| shitposts and if there is cross referencing it with the
| last couple months of his posts.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| If you would like to contribute to monitoring Facebook,
| consider adding Ad Observer to your browser. It's non-
| intrusive.
|
| https://adobserver.org/
|
| AdObserver is a project of Cybersecurity for Democracy at New
| York University's Tandon School of Engineering. This extension
| was originally developed by researchers from the Algorithmic
| Transparency Institute, Quartz, New York University, and the
| University of Grenoble. Technical advice was also provided by
| ProPublica, WhoTargetsMe, and The Globe And Mail.
| CommitSyn wrote:
| I assume this will still work with uBlock Origin et al.
| activated?
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| I assume so, but am not certain.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| "If you think Cambridge Analytical was great, try this thing
| that's even better!"
| ahahahahah wrote:
| To be clear, people should not be using this thing that has
| no limits on what data it could be consuming. The CA thing
| people were upset about was that one user could give CA
| permission to read their FB data and that meant that CA had
| access to anything that that user had access to (like data
| that their friends shared with them). This is the same,
| without it even pretending to be limited by the
| restrictions that CA was limited by.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| The code is open source on GitHub.
|
| https://github.com/CybersecurityForDemocracy/social-
| media-co...
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I wonder what guarantee Twitter is offering that they won't just
| cancel or change the terms of the API program again with only a
| few days' notice.
| amelius wrote:
| Sounds like they want to become the next Bloomberg Terminal.
| mike_d wrote:
| All of these moves make sense when you zoom out and realize Musk
| has no interest in Twitter as a business. It is a megaphone to
| amplify his own voice and the voices that support his viewpoints.
| Having third party API consumers able to pull in content and
| reorder it other than how he wants it presented is counter to
| that goal.
|
| The genius of Fox News was "why spend money on buying political
| attack ads when you can just buy the network and run them all day
| long." Twitter is just becoming that too.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _The genius of Fox News was "why spend money on buying
| political attack ads when you can just buy the network and run
| them all day long."_
|
| No, that's a misunderstanding. What Fox News cares about is
| growing and maintaining an audience because that's what
| profitable. In pursuit of that profit, Fox News will foster its
| community however it can.
|
| And so, driven by profit seeking, Fox News has embraced total
| nihilism. Fox News will spin any narrative, tell any lie,
| invent any fiction if it thinks it is what its audience wants
| to hear. The more Fox News offers its audience comforting
| fictions, no matter how untrue, the better for the bottom line.
|
| You don't have to believe me on that. It's what Fox News says
| of itself:
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/08/tucker-car...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/fox-news-d...
| olalonde wrote:
| Also consistent with his stated goal of making the business
| profitable.
| secos wrote:
| That remains to be seen...
|
| I would not be surprised if he could have offered the api
| $420/mo and 100x more apps were willing and/or able to pay.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Except that Fox is profitable, and it isn't clear how much musk
| is willing or able to pay out of his own pocket for the
| privilege. I don't think he planned for that.
| hn2017 wrote:
| Precisely. That is his end goal to spread right wing
| viewpoints.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2022/10/30/elon-musk-paul-pelosi-tweet...
| recuter wrote:
| What are his viewpoints and how are they amplified considering
| anybody can post anything?
| cmh89 wrote:
| >What are his viewpoints
|
| Musk is very vocal about his far-right views. He's anti-
| union, anti-public health, etc.
|
| >how are they amplified considering anybody can post
| anything?
|
| Anyone can post anything, but Musk can and has systemically
| prioritized his tweets over organic content.
| recuter wrote:
| > Anyone can post anything, but Musk can and has
| systemically prioritized his tweets over organic content.
|
| I'd be interested in _any_ sort of proof.
|
| > Musk is very vocal about his far-right views. He's anti-
| union, anti-public health, etc.
|
| Please show specific examples of his far-right views, so I
| can understand what specifically you mean by that term
| other than things you personally find disagreeable.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| What an absurd statement - everything he's done is to make
| twitter profitable and viable as a business - reduced
| headcount, reduced systems, reduced perks, .... He was already
| high profile in numerous spheres so no amplification was
| required. It's obvious that you don't share his viewpoints, and
| so you're simply slinging mud. It's the opinion of many that
| Musk didn't even want twitter, as a megaphone or otherwise,
| that he screwed up, obligating himself, and now has to make a
| successful business of it.
| babyshake wrote:
| I would love to see this "buying social media company to force
| everyone to pay attention to you"incorporated into the last
| season of Succession, although I am sure it was my mostly
| written before all of this Musk Twitter drama.
| croes wrote:
| But these third parties brought traffic and helped Twitter
| being relevant.
| orbit7 wrote:
| That's a novel way to get free publicity lol
| babyshake wrote:
| At the very least, they should be allowing Blue subscribers
| enough API access to do basic Zapier style workflows running a
| few times a day. There are a lot of folks out there who want to
| do the same simple personal uses of the Twitter API they have
| been doing for 10+ years.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not the greatest Musk fan but IMHO his approach to charge
| those who benefits from Twitter is spot on and I'm actually
| rooting for him to be able to find a viable business model which
| does not rely on selling my attention to highest bidder.
|
| If you are going to influence people, pay for the reach and If
| you are going to mine data, pay for the data. I guess the exact
| pricing can be adjusted according to the market needs but I agree
| with the paid access approach.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Fully agree, I just wish I knew who these people are, because
| clearly he has looked at some data that suggests they'll pay
| up, or his hosting costs will be significantly lowered.
| code_runner wrote:
| I'm not convinced Elon uses a lot of data in decisions like
| these. This might be just an arbitrary number to start
| negotiations from.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| They could make even more money if they charged $84k per month!
| Genius business model.
| kube-system wrote:
| that depends on the demand elasticity.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| That wouldn't be the weed number tho.
| randlet wrote:
| Not sure if it's true in this case but in many cases charging
| double and halving your customer base is a win I think.
| jeffbee wrote:
| [flagged]
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Yeah, but that had a different top-level comment
| dymk wrote:
| Where?
| piqi wrote:
| > ...find a viable business model which does not rely on
| selling my attention to highest bidder.
|
| They'll do both.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I think Twitter will sell your attention in addition to other
| revenue streams, given the chance.
| code_runner wrote:
| They'll chase anything that makes money but if the ONLY
| source of money is our attention etc... that's a worse spot
| right?
| harvey9 wrote:
| It is for Twitter. Our attention is a synonym for showing
| ads. If advertisers step away because they got nervous
| about the behavior of the new owner then it's better for
| Twitter to have other sources of income than not.
| addisonl wrote:
| Exactly, your attention is always going to be sold to the
| highest bidder--that won't change.
|
| Now you just get worse 3rd party apps and integrations.
| Interesting to see the attempt to spin this as a positive.
| lowercased wrote:
| if the integrations and overall experience is worse...
| won't that mean there's less attention (and possibly less
| quality attention) to be sold?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The difficulty is, people can still scrape the data. That data
| scraping is likely to cost Twitter more than the API did, as
| they have to serve up the full page.
|
| Yes, you can try to block people doing that, but historically
| people haven't succeeded.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| I, for one, will scrape Twitter relentlessly.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Academics don't resell the data to others. In fact, their
| existing agreements with Twitter requires their published
| datasets (for reproducibility) to be anonymized precisely to
| ensure they don't become a commercial goldmine.
|
| Given that most of the article is about the pricing tiers for
| academic use, based on marketing communications to
| universities, your comment seems strangely indifferent to the
| context of this news. These proposed costs are unaffordable
| precisely because academics are _not_ running a business around
| the data. If the article were about enterprise data sales, your
| point would make sense.
| 2h wrote:
| Why cant universities fund it with their billion dollar
| endowments?
| asutekku wrote:
| There is literally only couple of US universities having
| that, for smaller universities 42k a month for a research
| or two doesn't make any financial sense at all. This price
| is just basically a huge gatekeeper to prevent most people
| using it.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Not many universities have billion dollar endowments.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Academic work has all kinds of costs, why should data be free
| of charge?
| optionalsquid wrote:
| As you say, Academics are pretty used to paying for access
| to data, services, material, etc., but $42k-per-month for
| limited access to Twitter sounds more like a "fuck off"
| price than anything else.
| viscanti wrote:
| How many researchers can and will pay $42k per month for
| access? What's the market size here? Is this anything more
| than a drop in the bucket for Twitter?
| goosedragons wrote:
| There's pretty huge gap between $0 a month and $42,000.
| Even a year of data would require pretty huge grant.
| andrejguran wrote:
| doesn't have to be free but with every increase there will
| be less research that can afford to pay for the data and
| with the proposed pricing of $500.000 for 0.3% of tweets it
| seems that no-one will be willing to pay the price
| favaq wrote:
| I don't see anything positive coming out of academia having
| access to the Twitter firehose.
| precompute wrote:
| It's expensive because now the real customers are now out in
| the open: governments. Endless coffers.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Except twitter won't pay the people who have created the data
| in the first place. So it's stopping short of actually paying
| your dues.
| RobRivera wrote:
| I dont expect to be paid for my content creation on facebook
| or instagram.
|
| Yt, for sure.
|
| I think it is fair to say this is a moving topic
| cmh89 wrote:
| >I'm not the greatest Musk fan but IMHO his approach to charge
| those who benefits from Twitter is spot on and I'm actually
| rooting for him to be able to find a viable business model
| which does not rely on selling my attention to highest bidder.
|
| If there is money to be made, he's not going to pass it up. Why
| not charge and sell your attention to the highest bidder at the
| same time? It's the literal cable model and it's proven to work
| for 50 years.
| croes wrote:
| And if collect data, pay for that too.
|
| When does Twitter start paying it's users who produce the data?
| codetrotter wrote:
| > When does Twitter start paying it's users who produce the
| data?
|
| Never.
|
| Having a business in the capitalist system is about
| maximising profits.
|
| Musk spent ~$44bn USD or so to buy Twitter (and tried to back
| out of the deal too). Do you really think Twitter is gonna
| fairly compensate any of the users any time soon?
|
| You'd be better off migrating to Mastodon. Maybe some
| instance in that ecosystem will figure out how to use crypto
| for good, and to compensate its content creators.
| aliswe wrote:
| > _Do you really think Twitter is gonna fairly compensate
| any of the users any time soon?_
|
| Yes, if it makes business sense to do so. Like it does for
| content creatos.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The free users remain being the product though, don't we? We
| are the reach and the mined so the company can sell that but
| at least maybe there's a chance of not being interrupted.
|
| Ideally, everyone would pay to use the service and nothing
| would be mined for manipulation but that world is hard to
| imagine in 2023.
| code_runner wrote:
| Like it or not the service being available is the payment.
| People clearly already want to use it
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Lol what? Can you please explain your thinking on this unless
| you were just trying to be funny.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > When does Twitter start paying it's users who produce the
| data?
|
| Why do those users choose to produce data for Twitter/on
| Twitter for free?
| wvenable wrote:
| Because it's free to do so.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Then you can't really complain about not getting paid for
| it, can you?
| mesozoic wrote:
| When they have a viable alternative option that competes with
| twitter where they can get similar influence which his what
| most of them want
| 8note wrote:
| The reach and data aren't twitter the business' to exchange
| though, it's the Twitter community of users
| timcavel wrote:
| [dead]
| mikestew wrote:
| 420 with just a few extra zeros added on, eh? The hilarity just
| never stops, does it?
| shantanujoshi wrote:
| All this daily anti musk rhetoric veiled in pro science
| narratives and not one comment on every other entity milking
| academic budgets. There's plenty of examples.
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