A Botpocalypse Begins As Twitter's API Is Shut Down

This week, Twitter appears to have made the decision to change its free API tier to a "paid basic tier," and it seems likely that the change will have an enormous impact on the Twitter ecosystem as we currently know it. 

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In the past, popular Twitter bots such as the Thread Reader App have relied on the free tier to be able to operate, but this may now even force them to pay potentially exorbitant prices or cease to operate altogether as a result of the change (the change was supposed to take place on February 9th, but was delayed again.)

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In addition to Twitter, the changes to the API have already had an impact off the platform as well. 

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In April 6th, Substack reported that Twitter had "unexpectedly restricted" the ability to embed tweets in newsletters, stating that the change was in response to their warnings that account logins could be affected.

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Twitter has already experienced a dramatic change since it banned third-party clients in January and, with the API changes to come, we may see the platform become even less like the social network we used to know it to be in the future.