Final week, Twitter mentioned it’s shutting down free entry to its APIs beginning February 9. Now, days earlier than the deadline, Elon Musk mentioned that after getting suggestions from builders, Twitter will present a write-only API for “bots offering good content material that’s free.”

This resolution is as opaque as a few of the different coverage selections beneath Musk’s administration. There isn’t any data on what constitutes “good content material” and who will determine that. Nevertheless, if Twitter finally ends up implementing this rule, some bots will get a brand new lifeline on the social community.

Beforehand, Twitter shuttered API entry to third-party shoppers saying they broke a “long-standing rule” with none specification. Then the corporate silently up to date its developer phrases to replicate that app can’t  “use or entry the Licensed Supplies to create or try to create a substitute or comparable service or product to the Twitter Purposes.”

Following the announcement, quite a lot of builders who made enjoyable of bots criticized the choice saying that their automation offered free content material to folks and in flip enhanced the providers. Final week, Buzzfeed interviewed a number of bot builders who have been sad with the choice. These embody @_restaurant_bot which tweets random photographs of eating places and @_weather_bot_which tweets photographs of various locations with climate updates.

For the time being, it’s not clear if accounts like @BigTechAlert, which tweets about massive tech execs and organizations following and unfollowing one another, shall be eligible for this free tier as they may must scan account data.

Darius Kazemi, a developer who has made over 80 bots and even organized a bot devs summit in 2016, advised TechCrunch over a name that these automated accounts have been an integral a part of Twitter for years. He mentioned that a few of these bots with 1000’s of followers carry pleasure to many individuals each day.

He talked about that it could be expensive to keep up these bots who’re offering free content material to the platform

“I’ve greater than 80 bots on Twitter so it could take me a number of thousand {dollars} to maintain them up yearly and I can’t afford that type of cash,” he mentioned.

Musk has been making an attempt to generate extra income for Twitter with strikes like a brand new expensive subscription plan and ramping up advert cash. He additionally plans to indicate advertisements in replies to share income with creators. Whereas the small print on how this may work are skinny, the Twitter CEO mentioned that solely Blue Subscribers can earn this cash. So it’s probably that content material bots received’t earn cash even when advertisements are displayed on their accounts or in replies under their tweets.

Twitter’s free API discontinuation doesn’t simply have an effect on bot builders. There are tons of scholar builders and hate speech or misinformation researchers who won’t have a finances to pay a month-to-month charge. Twitter’s v2 API had particular entry for teachers however that may not be the case beneath the brand new API guidelines.

Builders have additionally pointed out that quite a lot of bots spreading spam don’t use truly use the official API. So the corporate’s intention to close down free API to weed out spam won’t work properly.