I stopped all my Twitter bots! Here is why.

Published: June 26, 2023

A few months ago, I stopped all the technical smart Twitter bots I had created earlier. In this article, I will explain why I did that and why what caused it should be a concern for all of us.

Elon wanted a revolution!

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he either fired many of their technical staff himself or forced them to quit right after becoming the boss, revolutionizing the whole company quickly. They even lost some key personnel like their CISO, Lea Kissner, and Trust and Safety Chief, Ella Irwin! That means the company did not have anyone in charge of Data Security and Privacy for a while! 😱

Even though this was a big change, it was not the only one. Then, he decided to change the pricing model of the Twitter API. From then on, you could basically do nothing with the free tier, and other tiers are too expensive!

Why is the new pricing model terrible?

As a hobbyist developer, you usually intend to help the community by spending your time for free to build something meaningful for people to use. Value Added Services (VAS) that can extend Twitter's functionality without them needing to build everything themselves. As a developer, when you provide such a service for free, you also expect to operate it at a reasonably low cost. Right?

But that's not what Elon could understand! He desperately wanted to make money from everything without even thinking about the consequences and the negative impact of his actions on society.

To build a meaningful service on Twitter, you first need to read Tweets and analyze topics and trends. So, first, you should be able to read or search tweets or access their data stream. But, with the new pricing model, you need a Pro subscription at minimum, which costs $5,000 per month! 😱 I mean, seriously?! Elon Musk expected people to spend their own time for free to build solutions and, on top of that, pay him so much money just to access Twitter's API?! 🤦‍

I was one of those people who had spent my own time building something for the community to use for free. But, it is definitely stupid to think that a person like me can afford to pay $5,000 per month just to operate a free service for people to use!

Twitter Dev: API pricing changes

Conclusion

If you own a company, respect the people who are working hard to add value to your solution for free. Such people should be supported, so don't be greedy and see values other than money.

With the new CEO, I hope that Twitter will change its pricing model later so that people who are willing to spend their own time to help society can continue to contribute to platforms like Twitter.

If you remember, these were the Smart Twitter Bots that I had created earlier:

✅ @cloud_smart_bot

✅ @py_smart_bot

✅ @go_smart_bot

✅ @php_smart_bot

Twitter used to be a free platform accessible to everyone to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

In addition, like other platforms, marketers could buy ads to promote their products (with the "promoted" indicator), and hobbyist developers could build bots for others to access data the way they prefer and bring extra value to Twitter.

When Elon Musk took power, first, he forced hobbyists to leave the platform and stop their projects. Now, with the new rate limits, he is forcing everyone to leave the platform unless they pay him $$$

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