As part of Elon Musk’s latest attempts to turn a de facto online public square into a profitable enterprise (and rid the site of spam), Twitter announced earlier this month that it will be removing free API access for developers. The move has inspired near-unanimous outrage and disappointment from researchers, developers and journalists who rely on API tools to carry out their work.

“Nobody really knows a lot about what’s going on,” said Carlos Hernández- Echevarría, head of public policy at Maldita, a large independent fact-checking organization in Spain. “What we have is an announcement from Twitter that is denying API access that used to be free up until now, adding a paywall.”

Hernández-Echevarría said Twitter has not provided researchers with much clarity, but that several research projects in the fact-checking community depend on Twitter’s free API access and would likely disappear under a pay-to-play arrangement.

Twitter has given almost no direct communication to researchers, developers and fact-checkers who use the tool, aside from a few posts from the @TwitterDev account that raised more questions than answers. The series of tweets addressing the new API plan were all heavily ratioed — meaning the replies in the threads below received more likes than the original post, or that the retweets and comments for the post outnumbered its likes.

The first post came Feb. 2, saying that in a week, Twitter would “no longer support free access to the Twitter API” and that a paid version would be available instead. After the predictable outrage from researchers, developers and fact-checkers whose work relied on the tool, Twitter posted again on Feb. 13 that “there has been an immense amount of enthusiasm for the upcoming changes with Twitter API” and that it would be delaying the new API platform launch by “a few days.”

Several pending community notes below the tweet noted the opposite:

“Enthusiasm is defined as a ‘strong excitement of feeling’ or ‘intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval,’” one note reads. “There is no evidence that people feel this way about new restrictions being applied to an API.”

“Users and developers have expressed outrage at the situation,” reads another.

“If you told me, I would have said this is a satire story. This can’t be true,” said Maarten Schenk, the co-founder of LeadStories, a U.S.-based fact-checking outlet that regularly employs the API in its work. “But no. It’s real. It’s an astounding level of unprofessionalism by a major organization.”

Schenk posted a poll under Twitter’s latest “enthusiasm” claim, the results of which suggest a resounding lack of enthusiasm for the update.

Hernández-Echevarría said researchers use the API to quickly identify content that is going viral, as well as to map out networks of disseminators of disinformation. 

“Some others are complaining about ongoing projects ending —  for example, tracking the harassment of women journalists. If they don’t have the data, they can’t do it anymore,” said Hernández- Echevarría. “Even organizations that raise awareness about natural disasters — such as the one happening in Turkey right now — have been relying on this technology that is going to be soon unavailable.”

“The ironic thing is that they’re ostensibly trying to stop the bad bots — the spammers,” said Schenk. “But they actually make money from spamming. Oh yeah, here’s a hundred bucks, no problem, and then they keep spamming. But it pushes out the hobbyists that make bots that make Twitter fun.”

A task force within the European Code of Practice on Disinformation has already met, and plans to communicate the potential legal obligations of Twitter regarding API access to the European Commission.

Interesting fact-checks

(Shutterstock)

• Science Feedback: Link between CO2 and Earth’s temperature is well-established, despite claims on Fox News (English)
  • “Past climate data show a correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature, and physics shows CO2 is a greenhouse gas that strongly influences the temperature of the earth’s surface.”
• Verificat: Bird flu has spread unprecedentedly among birds, but infections in humans are occasional (Catalan)
  • “Cases in birds have soared to unprecedented levels, and recent jumps from the virus to mammals such as sea lions and mink have shown the need to closely monitor the evolution of the virus. However, the risk of human contagion is considered low and both the authorities and the experts consulted by Verificat rule out, for now, talk of a pandemic.”
• RMIT FactLab: The Daily Mail acts after being fact-checked (English)
  • “The Daily Mail has taken action after being fact-checked, and amended an article that gave the impression Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was responsible for a beer tax hike, when in fact the beer tax rates rise automatically in line with inflation, typically every six months, under rules that have existed for 40 years.”

Quick hits

Portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

From the news: 

• Twitter API Shutdown Threatens Fight Against Misinformation, Harassment, And Toxic Content “The announcement of the end of free access to Twitter’s public data alarms researchers, journalists and members of civil society who see how the main source of data for the investigation of misinformation on social networks and free applications of public interest will be closed.” (Marilín Gonzalo, Newtral)
• Questions and answers about the train derailment in Ohio, United States “Since the day after the derailment occurred, the EPA has evaluated possible air contamination in the affected areas, through real-time monitoring and taking samples sent to the laboratory, as indicated by its updated accident report. The analysis of samples takes longer to give results but they are more precise, the document clarifies.” (Miguel Angel Muñecas Vidal, Miguel Ángel Sogorb Sánchez, Maldita)

From/for the community: 

• Google and YouTube are partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network to distribute a $13.2 million grant to the international fact-checking community. “The world needs fact-checking more than ever before. This partnership with Google and YouTube infuses financial support to global fact-checkers and is a step in the right direction,” said Baybars Örsek, former executive director of the IFCN. “And while there’s much work to be done, this partnership has sparked meaningful collaboration and an important step.”
• The IFCN has awarded $450,000 in grant support to organizations working to lessen the impact of false and misleading information on WhatsApp. In partnership with Meta, the Spread the Facts Grant Program gives verified fact-checking organizations resources to identify, flag and reduce the spread of misinformation that threatens more than 100 billion messages each day. The grant supports eleven projects from eight countries: India, Spain, Nigeria, Georgia, Bolivia, Italy, Indonesia and Jordan. Read more about the announcement here.
• Find information about helping the victims of the Turkish-Syrian earthquake here.
• The OSINT team at Faktisk, in collaboration with doctoral student Sohail Ahmed Khan, developed two prototypes of digital tools that verify audiovisual content.
• IFCN job announcements: Program Officer and Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist

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