Shutdown of Twitter’s free API affects third-party platforms like Substack and Flipboard

7 Apr. (Portaltic/EP) –

Twitter has begun restricting access to its eponymous social network application programming interface (API), a measure that has already affected third-party platforms such as Echobox, Substack and Flipboard.

The Twitter API is a set of programmatic functionalities that allows developers to create complementary applications to this social network that have the ability to interact with it and its content.

The company announced at the beginning of last February that it would stop offering its free API and that those who were interested in continuing to use it would have to pay a basic level of payment as of February 9.

Shortly after and in response to the criticism and suggestions derived from said decision, the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, confirmed that he would make available to developers “a lightweight, write-only API” for ‘bots’ that offered “good content” and that this would be free.

Arrival of the deadline for the removal of the free APIthe company announced an extension until February 13, ensuring that thereafter it would offer “paid basic access” for a monthly fee.

It was the following day when it announced a new extension of the implementation period for its new payment API, although it did not determine what the deadline would be to be able to continue using its services for free.

Now platforms like stack and flip board They have ensured that they cannot work with the free tools offered by Twitter because the platform would have begun to limit it since Tuesday, as reported mashable. Specifically, they have claimed to have problems when inserting links and sharing publications.

Developers such as Tweet Hunter scheduling tool developer Tibo Louis-Lucas have commented that have not received any warning by Twitter prior to making these API changes.

Echobox, in fact, has assured that when the social network announced the changes that it would implement with three subscription levels, it asked to register in one of them. Twitter, however, I would not have answered and would have cut off your API access “without notice”.

THREE LEVELS

At the end of March, Twitter published the new levels of access to its interface -three in total, one of them free and without the use of functions for the creation of ‘bots’- and commented that the free level would limit the published tutis to 1,500 a month.

The next modality is known as ‘Basic’, it has a price of 3,000 ensued tweets and 50,000 tweets at the application level, as well as a limit of 10,000 read tweets. For the third level, on the other hand, no limits or prices have been specified.