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I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer shoul

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

_fat_santa 4y ago
The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.
- mmpdev 4y ago
  But not every tweet through the api would be bots right? Like someone using a custom twitter client as a single user shouldn't get that label, no?
  - varjag 4y ago
    How are you going to tell?
    - pvarangot 4y ago
      They can distribute keys associated to an identity and have humans review the apps or bot purpose and content, but charge for the review.
      - pasquinelli 4y ago
        is there anything stopping me from writing a browser extension to make posts on the site automatically? i did work for a guy on that sort of setup spamming used car dealership ads, and it may have been a hastle keeping it running but we got plenty of ads out.
        adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        nothing other than the fact that if they find you doing this, they'll likely ban your account.
      - nradov 4y ago
        If the private keys are distributed inside an approved client app then any competent hacker can decompile the binary and extract the keys. At that point the keys can be used by bots or other unauthorized apps, and there's no reliable way for the server to distinguish them.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    That's going to be tricky too because I could imagine someone offering a service to actors and other public people to help manage their twitter accounts (maybe discourage them from posting stupid shit at 1 am. I'm looking at you, Elon), in which case you wouldn't even have a 1:1 ratio. The usual solution, historically, it to provide different levels of service based on your account type. The couple of times I've worked somewhere that the admins had a disjointed set of servers from the users was really a huge stress relief. You want admins to 'see' what the user sees, but to be able to work even if the site is being DOS'ed. And ideally you want users to be able to use the site even if the admins manage to DOS themselves (admin functions tend to have a higher fanout than end user functions, so the danger of catastrophic fanout is always higher).
  - duckmysick 4y ago
    One option would be to ban custom Twitter clients. As a bonus, enforcing official apps opens more possibilities for monetization. Twitter could even release a special app for advertising agencies who manage multiple accounts on behalf of their customers and charge appropriate subscription.
    - Uehreka 4y ago
      As a bonus? Maybe for Twitter, but as a user, I would not care for this at all.
    - dheera 4y ago
      My take is banning custom clients should be deemed an ADA violation. You should be allowed to create your own client for any service you want, that is customized to your input needs.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    > Like someone using a custom twitter client as a single user shouldn't get that label, no? Why not? If it's a niche client not many people use such false positive would be rare. Also such people probably don't have huge audirnce and they and their audiences won't care. And it might be deterrent against people trying to build popular alternative client that might compete with main twitter app. I don't think aiming for 100% accurate label is on the table.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      > And it might be deterrent against people trying to build popular alternative client that might compete with main twitter app. That's horrible for users. Twitter's iOS app is a third-party app they bought because it was so much better than their own at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetie
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Yeah, but that was then and this is now. Thinghs kinda settled down since then. The real danger of opening the API and marking all tweets made through API as BOT is that this label looses impact if some alternative client that uses API raises to prominence. I'd say that current setup where users have no indication that something might have been posted by bot is way more horrible.
  - schrodinger 4y ago
    Humans are really creative. One potential outcome is a few well known ppl start using a 3rd party client, tell their followers that’s why it says bot, and the badge loses its meaning.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  With an open API, you even open up the door to "moderation bots" that autoban users from your timeline if they appear to be bots Hmm...this may turn into "Ban speech from my account that's promoting right/left wing agenda" moderation bots Let the bot wars begin
  - potta_coffee 4y ago
    I'm not going to lie, "bot wars" sounds a lot more fun than current Twitter. I want to play.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Those already do kind of exist, I recall scripts existing which can be used to block users from lists, and inevitably those were used for reinforcing echo chambers. On the other hand, providing users with tools to curate their timelines is much better than having the company shove some arbitrary rulings down everyone's throats. Edit: In a sense this would be one of the things I have come to really enjoy about running a Misskey instance. The content is all out there on other Mastadon, Pleroma and Misskey instances in the fediverse, both stuff I would enjoy and stuff I would find extremely offensive but that doesn't really matter because what I can see is entirely in my control.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  I tweet using the iPhone app Tweetbot. Would my tweets be marked as a bot?
  - redavni 4y ago
    - jonny_eh 4y ago
      So you're saying "bot identification" would be an opt-in feature? That would go well.
      - themitigating 4y ago
- elorant 4y ago
  If I were to build a bot I wouldn’t even touch the API. Why not simulate everything through a headless browser and stay under the radar. Then build a farm of those simulations and you can publish/promote everything you desire pretty much undetectable.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > If I were to build a bot I wouldn’t even touch the API. If you were to build a malicious bot, sure. If you were to build a bot to tweet about the weather in Sheffield, you might as well use the API.
    - redox99 4y ago
      Yeah but the bots that people complain about are the malicious bots that try to pass as humans.
      - dotnet00 4y ago
        Those become a lot easier to work with when you differentiate them from good-faith bots. Discord does something similar, although I feel they've gone way too far with policing it.
      - takeda 4y ago
        The idea was about opening the API, and this suggestion was to argument that it makes easier for the malicious bots. So this was suggested to make the API less valuable for that purpose. I think the only problem would be if this API was used by non-bots (perhaps some relays) and the tag loses its meaning.
      - ohmyzee 4y ago
        I think we need to expand our vocabulary a little on this subject. A lot of people seem to think that these "bots" are just limited to "buy crypto today" type posters. What they don't realise is that the comment they are reading right now could well have been written by a bot.
- freejazz 4y ago
  This is just kicking the can down the next level on the issue. They can't tell which bots are bots so what difference does it make it if the solution isn't to ban them but to just limit them? The problem is identifying the bots.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Without an API, the default "I want to write a bot for Twitter" path forward is to automate the human UI -- to some extent, this makes you look like somebody who is trying to evade bot detection. I suspect there are lots of people in the class of "wants to do something interesting, isn't particularly interested in being malicious but doesn't mind breaking the rules." Maybe an official bot API would dry up that ecosystem?
- VancouverMan 4y ago
  I think the "bot" versus "real" account differentiation is quite irrelevant in practice. For example, every now and then I check what some elected Canadian politicians have tweeted recently. Even though these are Twitter accounts that would probably be considered "real", and they often have a check mark, pretty much everything they tweet is, in effect, following a script. Often, these tweets are just a useless acknowledgement of some obscure holiday celebrated by some unrelated ethnic or religious group that they want the votes of, or they're tweets delivering pointless congratulations for an irrelevant "accomplishment", or they're tweets regurgitating some very specific party talking point that a bunch of other representatives from the same party are simultaneously regurgitating. These accounts are seen as "real" accounts corresponding to "real" people, yet what they produce is consistently some of the most artificial content I've ever seen.
  - dwaltrip 4y ago
    That's an unusual example. Most posts on twitter are not formulaic recognition of holidays by politicians. In general, not knowing if a machine or a human wrote a twitter post is a bad thing.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      There’s many variations of this. News outlets and fans tweeting sports results. Public event celebration (new year, xmas, father day etc.). The vast majority of these tweets could be managed by bots and we wouldn’t know the difference. I actually follow many bots on twitter knowingly, but they could be people in disguise I wouldn’t care. In my opinion, the content of a tweet (is it spam ? is it abusing the platform ?) matters way more than wether it’s a bot or a human doing the spamming/abuse.
      - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
        > In my opinion, the content of a tweet (is it spam ? is it abusing the platform ?) matters way more than wether it’s a bot or a human doing the spamming/abuse. What about replies and retweets? EX: If you have high quality (or good faith) content that's supported/attacked by bots vs real people.
- dheera 4y ago
  What about people who use the API for accessibility reasons because the official app isn't compatible with their needs?
- sbf501 4y ago
  When I used twitter a decade ago, I used TweetDeck, which used the API to post to twitter for me. So that would label me as a Bot just because I like a better UX/UI.
  - KMnO4 4y ago
    That’s a trivial problem to solve.
    - i_see_things 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 101011 4y ago
      So trivial that nobody has ever solved it at scale. If there's a flow that a human can go through to oauth with an application, then there's a way to bypass that same flow through a bot.
      - andrepd 4y ago
        How is that not a problem for the official interface then?
        pasquinelli 4y ago
        well, it is. so the problem is the quest to get rid of bots.
      - kshacker 4y ago
        Let me solve it as a technical person. Whether management wants it or not is not my forte. You want an API because other apps are better. Let those apps partner with Twitter to allow only humans and not a second order API. If they do that, they get kicked out faster than Fortnite got kicked out. Both Twitter and the API user need to own the relationship and guarantee its sanctity so it will likely require an investment bigger than $99 to be paid by the API user (app) to Twitter. So you will not have infinite API apps, just a few of them, those who can pay the cost of providing and validating the API.
- reitanqild 4y ago
  Telegram does something like this. But it also allows (even encourages) third party clients, which can act on behalf of ordinary users.
- mbesto 4y ago
  Good example: AwareOps tweets every time a solution goes down: https://twitter.com/awareops https://twitter.com/awareops Is that spamming bot stuff or useful or both? How about the kid who wrote an app that tweets everyone position of a billionaire's airplane location? That's the point. > but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed. What if I do this through Zapier? What about Hootsuite? Who's a BOT and who isn't?
  - buzzkill90 4y ago
    How about we just print capital letter the "BOT" on automated accounts? And then just add a optional filter for comments/likes/shares?
- NaughtyShiba 4y ago
  That’s not the bot issue everyone is talking about. It’s bunch of fake/empty accounts posting/replying something what pushes some fakenews, propoganda, etc. It has been especially noticeable this year, since February 24th
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  Musk hates bots mainly because of all the єɭ๏ภ ๓ยรк wants to give you free money scams. That isn't really caused by the API
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    The 'bots on Twitter' thing is perhaps one of the few things I agree with Musk about. Searching a hashtag like #javascript or #webdev or similar reveals a whole universe of obviously low quality content posting bots getting suspiciously the same number of likes and retweets on every post. Things like "Top 10 Web Languages You Need To Know" and the list is just randomly shuffled with link shorteners everywhere. This stuff is definitely polluting whatever sacred public square Musk seems to think Twitter needs to be. Obviously bots and spam is a monumental problem that transcends Twitter.
- MarkSweep 4y ago
  They added this a year ago: https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/2021/the-secret-world-of-good-bots https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/202... I have not seen many obvious bot accounts using it, even the “good” ones.
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    They should try to detect bots not using the API and ban them. IMO all modern freedom of speech issues stem from not being able to differentiate between humans and bots. And it may be the case that it's not a solvable problem and we should assume any sentiment expressed online is always just noise.
- bumblebritches5 4y ago
- anonymousab 4y ago
  > the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts Nah, I'd bet that it really is as simple as the fact that the first thing Elon sees under any and everything he tweets is a flood of cryptobot fake posts and scams. That he and we identify them quite easily, and he's just flat-out tired of it. If clamping down on API access also curtails a significant proportion of those posts, then he'll do it, even if it's just a temporary relief.
  - kevinmchugh 4y ago
    I agree this is what his issue is likely to be. I'd be pretty surprised if those accounts were obviously using the API, too easy to ban them by application.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  half of what I tweet could be done by a bot, that is to say answer to writerslift posts with links to books and articles. the other half could not. I'm currently real, but would I be a bot if I automate my bot half?
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  >The problem isn't the bots, I would see bots as a major concern if you want to monetize the platform.
- machiaweliczny 4y ago
  this is brilliant
- mschuster91 4y ago
  That already exists (see e.g. that celebrity jet tracker) but I've never found out how to get that label.
fooey 4y ago
Part of his pitch during the acquisition was charging for embeds, so I would not be making any bets on the API loosening up
- IshKebab 4y ago
  That would be awesome. Maybe sites will stop using them and take screenshots instead.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > Maybe sites will stop using them Yeah, good luck getting someone like the BBC to pay for embedding tweets. > and take screenshots instead. I'd assume that would be against TOS (probably is already.)
    - lazide 4y ago
      I can’t imagine a screenshot of a tweet would be anything but fair use, or stoppable. Worse case, the BBC takes a screenshot of another screenshot?
    - addaon 4y ago
      Accessing tweets does not seem to require agreeing to any Twitter TOS. They have the option to not serve data to your client (browser), but once they've chosen to, there doesn't seem to be any agreement that would restrict your right to screenshot. Republishing those screenshots could run afoul of copyright restrictions, but no more so than embedding currently does.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        I've never seen TOS that don't state you agree to them by using the service...
        squeaky-clean 4y ago
        You can visit Twitter (logged out) and see tweets without ever having agreed to or being shown the TOS. After viewing 5 or so they put up a big "Please Register" popup that cannot be closed, but if you clear your cookies you're good again.
reilly3000 4y ago
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with an API (besides policy and moderation) is a good guy with an API. Some of the very best misinfo research and tooling came from academics having access to firehose data.
bradgessler 4y ago
IMO framing it as "get rid of the bots" is the wrong way to solve the problem because it's unsolvable, especially as we head more towards a world of content being generated by increasingly sophisticated ML algorithms. It's probably best to embrace the bots and instead think about it as a problem of categorizing, quantifying, and applying more metadata to messages that let people, agents, or other bots determine the qualities about the information that they want to know.
- kaesar14 4y ago
  100%. Allow open, reasonably rats-limited access to the API, and use the absolutely gargantuan amounts of data Twitter has built up to sort through bots. If other services can do it why can’t Twitter?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Who says other services have. Any examples here on your part?
- buzzkill90 4y ago
  > IMO framing it as "get rid of the bots" is the wrong way to solve the problem because it's unsolvable, I think it's super simple actually. Wanna get a blue check-mark to prove you are human? Here, pay us 10$ pledge. You'll lose it, if you break the "rulez". Add financial frictions to the game, and bots strategy won't scale...
three_seagrass 4y ago
Elon only mentioned the bot 'problem' to get out of the deal. He shut up about the bots as soon as it was evident the excuse wasn't working. Bots are of no concern otherwise.
miohtama 4y ago
With free API, third party providers can fill the gap with bad spam moderation Twitter could never figure out themselves. Instead of trying to maximize in-house value open ecosystem works better for Twitter.
gregshap 4y ago
Lots of the “bots” are people. The solution is to show high quality content and suppress low quality content, regardless of input.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  One persons high quality content is another person's trash.
  - gregshap 4y ago
    Sure but when twitter users complain about bots they are complaining about content quality, not keyboard input methods.
conradev 4y ago
I get that bots are a thing, but also Twitter's API doesn't serve ads, which is its primary source of revenue?
- jessaustin 4y ago
  ...ads, which is its primary source of revenue? That is what should change. The largest twit accounts, whether they use API or not, should be charged directly by twitter for the value of reaching their many followers. Twitter the firm is infamously bad at improving anything, but this would be a way of recruiting a variety of capable parties into important efforts like fighting bots, spam, harassment, etc. Also there would be lots of money. This was obvious ten years ago.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > > ..ads, which is its primary source of revenue? > The largest twit accounts, whether they use API or not, should be charged directly by twitter for the value of reaching their many followers Paid reach is still ads, and narrowing free organic reach so that only the ads people are willing to pay for broad reach for have broad seeming-organic reach drops perceived content quality for consumers directly and reduces the perceived upside for the people creating and developing reach for organic content, getting them to put less effort in on your platform, further reducing consumer-perceived content quality.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      Tweets by e.g. Kim Kardashian extolling the virtues of particular beauty products are certainly advertisements, but they function differently and they aren't received as such by many of her followers. AFAICT Kardashian isn't really paying twitter for these tweets? That seems like an ongoing error on twitter's behalf. Granted, insta posts are probably more valuable for Kardashian, but there are lots of other parties who would also pay twitter for the privilege of tweeting.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
cogogo 4y ago
My little side project is a terribly written bot that brings some joy to a niche group. I hope I don’t get excluded. It’s also brought me a lot of joy along with everything I’ve learned building it. There are a lot of automated accounts that are really interesting. Twitter is worse off right now - and people/communities hate uncertainty. Signed -@BostonTimelaps1
bjconlan 4y ago
If he does find the bot accounts significant enough to identify that he has been "duped" is there any recourse? I suspect this might be the canary in the mine (of social-media businesses) and Elon is passionate enough to release said numbers which could be used as a litmus for all business that marketed 'number of "users"' as something of a validator.
ryanSrich 4y ago
The majority of scams are not bots written with the API. They’re stollen accounts of real people that are semi-automated, semi mech turked using a variety of techniques.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  That is like killing all the mongoose since no one dies of snakebites anymore
thatwasunusual 4y ago
As a developer, not really a tweeter, I'd be super-happy if a read-only API was opened up again. It was a gold mine when it came to creating cool things back in the days, especially analysis stuff.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  No thanks don't want another Cambridge Analytica on our hands.
  - nichch 4y ago
    Yet those types of organizations are already scraping this data behind the scenes. Twitter’s API restrictions hurt well intentioned actors.
  - thatwasunusual 4y ago
    Do you think CA (and others) are restricted by API or non-API? A missing API hurts developers the most, not huge companies who can access the data either way.
incompatible 4y ago
Does he really hate bots, or was it just something he came up with to try to get out of buying it?
- buzzkill90 4y ago
  My guess is he wanted to lower the price... He's friend with Jack Dorsey, who said the bot problem is worse than Twitter is admitting. And nobody want's a social media platform discussion is ran by sucky AI.
giobox 4y ago
I think you hugely over-estimate the importance of “developer APIs” to the number of bots on twitter. You’re never going to really fully defeat browser automation or HTTP request playback with automatically generated payloads. No one technically needs an API if a web interface exists to automate something. It’s easier with an official API sure, but not super hard without. Indeed, a truly malicious bot farm would avoid the API altogether and just fake web client requests to look as much like the real thing as possible. Anyone can capture the HTTP messages with just a computer and an open source MITM proxy to decrypt and inspect the SSL message contents for recreating in a bot script or application.
- Heyso 4y ago
  How about making changes to the interface html structure/ids and same for the api. Will break any program using it, but won't bother users. Now record what accounts are silenced by that, do it multiples times and ypu have an idea who is a bot ?
  - no_time 4y ago
    If a screen reader can navigate it, a bot can do it too. And they must comply with accessibility regulations.
  - giobox 4y ago
    > browser automation
nr2x 4y ago
Labor is cheap depending on where you go.
rendall 4y ago
> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. That term bot conflates at least three distinct meanings. Not sure how blocking the API would affect #2 or #3 1) Automated accounts probably using the API that are run by a program to post content. Can be benign. Here's an example: https://twitter.com/happyautomata/ https://twitter.com/happyautomata/ 2) Large accounts that push a particular point of view, often state sponsored, run in teams. Does not need an API. Here's an example: https://twitter.com/sprintermonitor https://twitter.com/sprintermonitor 3) Small accounts paid to push or disrupt a particular agenda in replies. Often state sponsored. Example I suspect: https://twitter.com/DaBoy1804/with_replies https://twitter.com/DaBoy1804/with_replies
simplotek 4y ago
> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. How relevant is the API though? Is it possible to put together a Selenium script that posts a tweet?
- nephanth 4y ago
  Might require changing some parameters of the browser / tweaking it a little or getting an older version, because nowadays browsers have a flag that says "hey, I'm being automated!" But other than that, I don't see how they could prevent it
techdragon 4y ago
If they think keeping the API closed down or closing it down even more, is an effective defence against the bots… They need a quick refresher course in why the Analog Hole makes perfect DRM impossible outside of completely controlled circumstances. Even if you required a dedicated twitter device per account, and no api at all… no more twitter website even or read only website … then you would get people building robots to touch the screen as fast as possible to “physically automate “ the devices… if you limit that device to only having one account associated with it, you would need a way to deauthorise a device for when you sell it or upgrade to a new one, so they would just automate the deauthorise workflows and “load balance” across any necessary size pool of devices. Any efforts like this will drastically increase user friction and drive away customers/users. Simultaneously as far as they go down this path there will be (as long as twitter is still considered relevant, at least) … be state funded propaganda organisations who’s interests align with funding such a device farm, and simultaneously they would want deniability so the operators of such twitter device farms would wind up in the sort of ethically dubious zone as companies like Pegasus group (examples because its after midnight and I don’t feel like looking up exact details, consider these hypothetical examples unless they are correct) selling their hardware to “legitimate governments” to perform a once off inspection of the phone data of someone crossing the border into the USA at JFK airport in New York, and also to counties like Saudi Arabia to hack and monitor dissidents round the clock by installing root kits/exploits. Effectively there’s no point, they should open up the api and monitor it better.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

_fat_santa 4y ago

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

mmpdev 4y ago
But not every tweet through the api would be bots right? Like someone using a custom twitter client as a single user shouldn't get that label, no?
- varjag 4y ago
  How are you going to tell?
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    They can distribute keys associated to an identity and have humans review the apps or bot purpose and content, but charge for the review.
    - pasquinelli 4y ago
      is there anything stopping me from writing a browser extension to make posts on the site automatically? i did work for a guy on that sort of setup spamming used car dealership ads, and it may have been a hastle keeping it running but we got plenty of ads out.
      - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        nothing other than the fact that if they find you doing this, they'll likely ban your account.
    - nradov 4y ago
      If the private keys are distributed inside an approved client app then any competent hacker can decompile the binary and extract the keys. At that point the keys can be used by bots or other unauthorized apps, and there's no reliable way for the server to distinguish them.
- hinkley 4y ago
  That's going to be tricky too because I could imagine someone offering a service to actors and other public people to help manage their twitter accounts (maybe discourage them from posting stupid shit at 1 am. I'm looking at you, Elon), in which case you wouldn't even have a 1:1 ratio. The usual solution, historically, it to provide different levels of service based on your account type. The couple of times I've worked somewhere that the admins had a disjointed set of servers from the users was really a huge stress relief. You want admins to 'see' what the user sees, but to be able to work even if the site is being DOS'ed. And ideally you want users to be able to use the site even if the admins manage to DOS themselves (admin functions tend to have a higher fanout than end user functions, so the danger of catastrophic fanout is always higher).
- duckmysick 4y ago
  One option would be to ban custom Twitter clients. As a bonus, enforcing official apps opens more possibilities for monetization. Twitter could even release a special app for advertising agencies who manage multiple accounts on behalf of their customers and charge appropriate subscription.
  - Uehreka 4y ago
    As a bonus? Maybe for Twitter, but as a user, I would not care for this at all.
  - dheera 4y ago
    My take is banning custom clients should be deemed an ADA violation. You should be allowed to create your own client for any service you want, that is customized to your input needs.
- scotty79 4y ago
  > Like someone using a custom twitter client as a single user shouldn't get that label, no? Why not? If it's a niche client not many people use such false positive would be rare. Also such people probably don't have huge audirnce and they and their audiences won't care. And it might be deterrent against people trying to build popular alternative client that might compete with main twitter app. I don't think aiming for 100% accurate label is on the table.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > And it might be deterrent against people trying to build popular alternative client that might compete with main twitter app. That's horrible for users. Twitter's iOS app is a third-party app they bought because it was so much better than their own at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetie
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - scotty79 4y ago
      Yeah, but that was then and this is now. Thinghs kinda settled down since then. The real danger of opening the API and marking all tweets made through API as BOT is that this label looses impact if some alternative client that uses API raises to prominence. I'd say that current setup where users have no indication that something might have been posted by bot is way more horrible.
- schrodinger 4y ago
  Humans are really creative. One potential outcome is a few well known ppl start using a 3rd party client, tell their followers that’s why it says bot, and the badge loses its meaning.
ZainRiz 4y ago
With an open API, you even open up the door to "moderation bots" that autoban users from your timeline if they appear to be bots Hmm...this may turn into "Ban speech from my account that's promoting right/left wing agenda" moderation bots Let the bot wars begin
- potta_coffee 4y ago
  I'm not going to lie, "bot wars" sounds a lot more fun than current Twitter. I want to play.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Those already do kind of exist, I recall scripts existing which can be used to block users from lists, and inevitably those were used for reinforcing echo chambers. On the other hand, providing users with tools to curate their timelines is much better than having the company shove some arbitrary rulings down everyone's throats. Edit: In a sense this would be one of the things I have come to really enjoy about running a Misskey instance. The content is all out there on other Mastadon, Pleroma and Misskey instances in the fediverse, both stuff I would enjoy and stuff I would find extremely offensive but that doesn't really matter because what I can see is entirely in my control.
jonny_eh 4y ago
I tweet using the iPhone app Tweetbot. Would my tweets be marked as a bot?
- redavni 4y ago
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    So you're saying "bot identification" would be an opt-in feature? That would go well.
    - themitigating 4y ago
elorant 4y ago
If I were to build a bot I wouldn’t even touch the API. Why not simulate everything through a headless browser and stay under the radar. Then build a farm of those simulations and you can publish/promote everything you desire pretty much undetectable.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > If I were to build a bot I wouldn’t even touch the API. If you were to build a malicious bot, sure. If you were to build a bot to tweet about the weather in Sheffield, you might as well use the API.
  - redox99 4y ago
    Yeah but the bots that people complain about are the malicious bots that try to pass as humans.
    - dotnet00 4y ago
      Those become a lot easier to work with when you differentiate them from good-faith bots. Discord does something similar, although I feel they've gone way too far with policing it.
    - takeda 4y ago
      The idea was about opening the API, and this suggestion was to argument that it makes easier for the malicious bots. So this was suggested to make the API less valuable for that purpose. I think the only problem would be if this API was used by non-bots (perhaps some relays) and the tag loses its meaning.
    - ohmyzee 4y ago
      I think we need to expand our vocabulary a little on this subject. A lot of people seem to think that these "bots" are just limited to "buy crypto today" type posters. What they don't realise is that the comment they are reading right now could well have been written by a bot.
freejazz 4y ago
This is just kicking the can down the next level on the issue. They can't tell which bots are bots so what difference does it make it if the solution isn't to ban them but to just limit them? The problem is identifying the bots.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Without an API, the default "I want to write a bot for Twitter" path forward is to automate the human UI -- to some extent, this makes you look like somebody who is trying to evade bot detection. I suspect there are lots of people in the class of "wants to do something interesting, isn't particularly interested in being malicious but doesn't mind breaking the rules." Maybe an official bot API would dry up that ecosystem?
VancouverMan 4y ago
I think the "bot" versus "real" account differentiation is quite irrelevant in practice. For example, every now and then I check what some elected Canadian politicians have tweeted recently. Even though these are Twitter accounts that would probably be considered "real", and they often have a check mark, pretty much everything they tweet is, in effect, following a script. Often, these tweets are just a useless acknowledgement of some obscure holiday celebrated by some unrelated ethnic or religious group that they want the votes of, or they're tweets delivering pointless congratulations for an irrelevant "accomplishment", or they're tweets regurgitating some very specific party talking point that a bunch of other representatives from the same party are simultaneously regurgitating. These accounts are seen as "real" accounts corresponding to "real" people, yet what they produce is consistently some of the most artificial content I've ever seen.
- dwaltrip 4y ago
  That's an unusual example. Most posts on twitter are not formulaic recognition of holidays by politicians. In general, not knowing if a machine or a human wrote a twitter post is a bad thing.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    There’s many variations of this. News outlets and fans tweeting sports results. Public event celebration (new year, xmas, father day etc.). The vast majority of these tweets could be managed by bots and we wouldn’t know the difference. I actually follow many bots on twitter knowingly, but they could be people in disguise I wouldn’t care. In my opinion, the content of a tweet (is it spam ? is it abusing the platform ?) matters way more than wether it’s a bot or a human doing the spamming/abuse.
    - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
      > In my opinion, the content of a tweet (is it spam ? is it abusing the platform ?) matters way more than wether it’s a bot or a human doing the spamming/abuse. What about replies and retweets? EX: If you have high quality (or good faith) content that's supported/attacked by bots vs real people.
dheera 4y ago
What about people who use the API for accessibility reasons because the official app isn't compatible with their needs?
sbf501 4y ago
When I used twitter a decade ago, I used TweetDeck, which used the API to post to twitter for me. So that would label me as a Bot just because I like a better UX/UI.
- KMnO4 4y ago
  That’s a trivial problem to solve.
  - i_see_things 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 101011 4y ago
    So trivial that nobody has ever solved it at scale. If there's a flow that a human can go through to oauth with an application, then there's a way to bypass that same flow through a bot.
    - andrepd 4y ago
      How is that not a problem for the official interface then?
      - pasquinelli 4y ago
        well, it is. so the problem is the quest to get rid of bots.
    - kshacker 4y ago
      Let me solve it as a technical person. Whether management wants it or not is not my forte. You want an API because other apps are better. Let those apps partner with Twitter to allow only humans and not a second order API. If they do that, they get kicked out faster than Fortnite got kicked out. Both Twitter and the API user need to own the relationship and guarantee its sanctity so it will likely require an investment bigger than $99 to be paid by the API user (app) to Twitter. So you will not have infinite API apps, just a few of them, those who can pay the cost of providing and validating the API.
reitanqild 4y ago
Telegram does something like this. But it also allows (even encourages) third party clients, which can act on behalf of ordinary users.
mbesto 4y ago
Good example: AwareOps tweets every time a solution goes down: https://twitter.com/awareops https://twitter.com/awareops Is that spamming bot stuff or useful or both? How about the kid who wrote an app that tweets everyone position of a billionaire's airplane location? That's the point. > but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed. What if I do this through Zapier? What about Hootsuite? Who's a BOT and who isn't?
- buzzkill90 4y ago
  How about we just print capital letter the "BOT" on automated accounts? And then just add a optional filter for comments/likes/shares?
NaughtyShiba 4y ago
That’s not the bot issue everyone is talking about. It’s bunch of fake/empty accounts posting/replying something what pushes some fakenews, propoganda, etc. It has been especially noticeable this year, since February 24th
FormerBandmate 4y ago
Musk hates bots mainly because of all the єɭ๏ภ ๓ยรк wants to give you free money scams. That isn't really caused by the API
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  The 'bots on Twitter' thing is perhaps one of the few things I agree with Musk about. Searching a hashtag like #javascript or #webdev or similar reveals a whole universe of obviously low quality content posting bots getting suspiciously the same number of likes and retweets on every post. Things like "Top 10 Web Languages You Need To Know" and the list is just randomly shuffled with link shorteners everywhere. This stuff is definitely polluting whatever sacred public square Musk seems to think Twitter needs to be. Obviously bots and spam is a monumental problem that transcends Twitter.
MarkSweep 4y ago
They added this a year ago: https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/2021/the-secret-world-of-good-bots https://blog.twitter.com/common-thread/en/topics/stories/202... I have not seen many obvious bot accounts using it, even the “good” ones.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  They should try to detect bots not using the API and ban them. IMO all modern freedom of speech issues stem from not being able to differentiate between humans and bots. And it may be the case that it's not a solvable problem and we should assume any sentiment expressed online is always just noise.
bumblebritches5 4y ago
anonymousab 4y ago
> the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts Nah, I'd bet that it really is as simple as the fact that the first thing Elon sees under any and everything he tweets is a flood of cryptobot fake posts and scams. That he and we identify them quite easily, and he's just flat-out tired of it. If clamping down on API access also curtails a significant proportion of those posts, then he'll do it, even if it's just a temporary relief.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  I agree this is what his issue is likely to be. I'd be pretty surprised if those accounts were obviously using the API, too easy to ban them by application.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
half of what I tweet could be done by a bot, that is to say answer to writerslift posts with links to books and articles. the other half could not. I'm currently real, but would I be a bot if I automate my bot half?
DeathArrow 4y ago
>The problem isn't the bots, I would see bots as a major concern if you want to monetize the platform.
machiaweliczny 4y ago
this is brilliant
mschuster91 4y ago
That already exists (see e.g. that celebrity jet tracker) but I've never found out how to get that label.

fooey 4y ago

Part of his pitch during the acquisition was charging for embeds, so I would not be making any bets on the API loosening up

IshKebab 4y ago
That would be awesome. Maybe sites will stop using them and take screenshots instead.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > Maybe sites will stop using them Yeah, good luck getting someone like the BBC to pay for embedding tweets. > and take screenshots instead. I'd assume that would be against TOS (probably is already.)
  - lazide 4y ago
    I can’t imagine a screenshot of a tweet would be anything but fair use, or stoppable. Worse case, the BBC takes a screenshot of another screenshot?
  - addaon 4y ago
    Accessing tweets does not seem to require agreeing to any Twitter TOS. They have the option to not serve data to your client (browser), but once they've chosen to, there doesn't seem to be any agreement that would restrict your right to screenshot. Republishing those screenshots could run afoul of copyright restrictions, but no more so than embedding currently does.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      I've never seen TOS that don't state you agree to them by using the service...
      - squeaky-clean 4y ago
        You can visit Twitter (logged out) and see tweets without ever having agreed to or being shown the TOS. After viewing 5 or so they put up a big "Please Register" popup that cannot be closed, but if you clear your cookies you're good again.

reilly3000 4y ago

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with an API (besides policy and moderation) is a good guy with an API. Some of the very best misinfo research and tooling came from academics having access to firehose data.

bradgessler 4y ago

IMO framing it as "get rid of the bots" is the wrong way to solve the problem because it's unsolvable, especially as we head more towards a world of content being generated by increasingly sophisticated ML algorithms. It's probably best to embrace the bots and instead think about it as a problem of categorizing, quantifying, and applying more metadata to messages that let people, agents, or other bots determine the qualities about the information that they want to know.

kaesar14 4y ago
100%. Allow open, reasonably rats-limited access to the API, and use the absolutely gargantuan amounts of data Twitter has built up to sort through bots. If other services can do it why can’t Twitter?
- pixl97 4y ago
  Who says other services have. Any examples here on your part?
buzzkill90 4y ago
> IMO framing it as "get rid of the bots" is the wrong way to solve the problem because it's unsolvable, I think it's super simple actually. Wanna get a blue check-mark to prove you are human? Here, pay us 10$ pledge. You'll lose it, if you break the "rulez". Add financial frictions to the game, and bots strategy won't scale...

three_seagrass 4y ago

Elon only mentioned the bot 'problem' to get out of the deal. He shut up about the bots as soon as it was evident the excuse wasn't working. Bots are of no concern otherwise.

miohtama 4y ago

With free API, third party providers can fill the gap with bad spam moderation Twitter could never figure out themselves. Instead of trying to maximize in-house value open ecosystem works better for Twitter.

gregshap 4y ago

Lots of the “bots” are people. The solution is to show high quality content and suppress low quality content, regardless of input.

dmitriid 4y ago
One persons high quality content is another person's trash.
- gregshap 4y ago
  Sure but when twitter users complain about bots they are complaining about content quality, not keyboard input methods.

conradev 4y ago

I get that bots are a thing, but also Twitter's API doesn't serve ads, which is its primary source of revenue?

jessaustin 4y ago
...ads, which is its primary source of revenue? That is what should change. The largest twit accounts, whether they use API or not, should be charged directly by twitter for the value of reaching their many followers. Twitter the firm is infamously bad at improving anything, but this would be a way of recruiting a variety of capable parties into important efforts like fighting bots, spam, harassment, etc. Also there would be lots of money. This was obvious ten years ago.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > > ..ads, which is its primary source of revenue? > The largest twit accounts, whether they use API or not, should be charged directly by twitter for the value of reaching their many followers Paid reach is still ads, and narrowing free organic reach so that only the ads people are willing to pay for broad reach for have broad seeming-organic reach drops perceived content quality for consumers directly and reduces the perceived upside for the people creating and developing reach for organic content, getting them to put less effort in on your platform, further reducing consumer-perceived content quality.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    Tweets by e.g. Kim Kardashian extolling the virtues of particular beauty products are certainly advertisements, but they function differently and they aren't received as such by many of her followers. AFAICT Kardashian isn't really paying twitter for these tweets? That seems like an ongoing error on twitter's behalf. Granted, insta posts are probably more valuable for Kardashian, but there are lots of other parties who would also pay twitter for the privilege of tweeting.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago

cogogo 4y ago

My little side project is a terribly written bot that brings some joy to a niche group. I hope I don’t get excluded. It’s also brought me a lot of joy along with everything I’ve learned building it. There are a lot of automated accounts that are really interesting. Twitter is worse off right now - and people/communities hate uncertainty. Signed -@BostonTimelaps1

bjconlan 4y ago

If he does find the bot accounts significant enough to identify that he has been "duped" is there any recourse? I suspect this might be the canary in the mine (of social-media businesses) and Elon is passionate enough to release said numbers which could be used as a litmus for all business that marketed 'number of "users"' as something of a validator.

ryanSrich 4y ago

The majority of scams are not bots written with the API. They’re stollen accounts of real people that are semi-automated, semi mech turked using a variety of techniques.

hackernewds 4y ago
That is like killing all the mongoose since no one dies of snakebites anymore

thatwasunusual 4y ago

As a developer, not really a tweeter, I'd be super-happy if a read-only API was opened up again. It was a gold mine when it came to creating cool things back in the days, especially analysis stuff.

hackernewds 4y ago
No thanks don't want another Cambridge Analytica on our hands.
- nichch 4y ago
  Yet those types of organizations are already scraping this data behind the scenes. Twitter’s API restrictions hurt well intentioned actors.
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  Do you think CA (and others) are restricted by API or non-API? A missing API hurts developers the most, not huge companies who can access the data either way.

incompatible 4y ago

Does he really hate bots, or was it just something he came up with to try to get out of buying it?

buzzkill90 4y ago
My guess is he wanted to lower the price... He's friend with Jack Dorsey, who said the bot problem is worse than Twitter is admitting. And nobody want's a social media platform discussion is ran by sucky AI.

giobox 4y ago

I think you hugely over-estimate the importance of “developer APIs” to the number of bots on twitter. You’re never going to really fully defeat browser automation or HTTP request playback with automatically generated payloads. No one technically needs an API if a web interface exists to automate something. It’s easier with an official API sure, but not super hard without. Indeed, a truly malicious bot farm would avoid the API altogether and just fake web client requests to look as much like the real thing as possible. Anyone can capture the HTTP messages with just a computer and an open source MITM proxy to decrypt and inspect the SSL message contents for recreating in a bot script or application.

Heyso 4y ago
How about making changes to the interface html structure/ids and same for the api. Will break any program using it, but won't bother users. Now record what accounts are silenced by that, do it multiples times and ypu have an idea who is a bot ?
- no_time 4y ago
  If a screen reader can navigate it, a bot can do it too. And they must comply with accessibility regulations.
- giobox 4y ago
  > browser automation

nr2x 4y ago

Labor is cheap depending on where you go.

rendall 4y ago

> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. That term bot conflates at least three distinct meanings. Not sure how blocking the API would affect #2 or #3 1) Automated accounts probably using the API that are run by a program to post content. Can be benign. Here's an example: https://twitter.com/happyautomata/ https://twitter.com/happyautomata/ 2) Large accounts that push a particular point of view, often state sponsored, run in teams. Does not need an API. Here's an example: https://twitter.com/sprintermonitor https://twitter.com/sprintermonitor 3) Small accounts paid to push or disrupt a particular agenda in replies. Often state sponsored. Example I suspect: https://twitter.com/DaBoy1804/with_replies https://twitter.com/DaBoy1804/with_replies

simplotek 4y ago

> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. How relevant is the API though? Is it possible to put together a Selenium script that posts a tweet?

nephanth 4y ago
Might require changing some parameters of the browser / tweaking it a little or getting an older version, because nowadays browsers have a flag that says "hey, I'm being automated!" But other than that, I don't see how they could prevent it

techdragon 4y ago

If they think keeping the API closed down or closing it down even more, is an effective defence against the bots… They need a quick refresher course in why the Analog Hole makes perfect DRM impossible outside of completely controlled circumstances. Even if you required a dedicated twitter device per account, and no api at all… no more twitter website even or read only website … then you would get people building robots to touch the screen as fast as possible to “physically automate “ the devices… if you limit that device to only having one account associated with it, you would need a way to deauthorise a device for when you sell it or upgrade to a new one, so they would just automate the deauthorise workflows and “load balance” across any necessary size pool of devices. Any efforts like this will drastically increase user friction and drive away customers/users. Simultaneously as far as they go down this path there will be (as long as twitter is still considered relevant, at least) … be state funded propaganda organisations who’s interests align with funding such a device farm, and simultaneously they would want deniability so the operators of such twitter device farms would wind up in the sort of ethically dubious zone as companies like Pegasus group (examples because its after midnight and I don’t feel like looking up exact details, consider these hypothetical examples unless they are correct) selling their hardware to “legitimate governments” to perform a once off inspection of the phone data of someone crossing the border into the USA at JFK airport in New York, and also to counties like Saudi Arabia to hack and monitor dissidents round the clock by installing root kits/exploits. Effectively there’s no point, they should open up the api and monitor it better.