[HN Gopher] Twitter's $42k-per-month API prices out nearly everyone ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-10 23:01 UTC)