This strikes me as very likely the Wrong Move here. Having a free tier that easily be used by, eg, open source client apps, etc. is - IMO - essential for Twitte

This strikes me as very likely the Wrong Move here. Having a free tier that easily be used by, eg, open source client apps, etc. is - IMO - essential for Twitter. OTOH, what I always thought they should do is radically democratize access - PAID access - to the API at higher usage levels, including the "firehose" level (everything). For years Twitter had this thing going on where it was more or less impossible to get firehose access, even if you were willing to pay. That always struck me as self-defeating.