Twitter had undergone significant changes after it came under Elon Musk’s control. previously free Twitter API Giving paid access to (application programming interfaces) was one of them.

Now there is a development that worries academics in this regard. Monthly for academics API access 42 thousand dollars herpes it wants the company requesting compensation to delete the data of those who don’t.

Twitter gave investigators 30 days

The information released today, Twitter data of academic researchers if they fail to pay said fee. He appeared to want to remove it. In other words, researchers who don’t pay the money can’t get updated data and will have to delete old data. The company gave them 30 days to make a decision. As it turned out, the researchers were even asked to take a screenshot of the data being deleted.

Researchers on the platform have long disinformation and hate speech He was able to follow such subjects as closely as possible and explore their effects on real life. To do this, Twitter provided an API called Decahouse. This API also captures 10% of researchers’ Twitter posts every day. to a bulk data stream allowed access. Decahouse was previously available for free or for a $200 monthly fee.

However, as we mentioned at the beginning, the company stopped providing free access to APIs in February and started setting high prices ranging from $100 to $42 thousand per month. This caused many companies to move away from Twitter. Universities also required $42,000 in “enterprise API” subscriptions, which were too high for researchers to pay.

The decision could have frightening consequences

Researchers say the decision could have serious consequences. Indiana University researcher Flippo Menczer said the decision was made on the platform. its serious consequences, such as the spread of disinformation, He said it could. He also added that issues such as deleting fake accounts are affected.

With this decision, some academics stated that they were discontinuing their studies, while others stated that they obtained the data informally. We’ll see how this policy from Twitter delivers in the future.