Twitter just closed the book on academic research


May 31, 2023

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Twitter was once a mainstay of academic research — a way to take the pulse of the internet. But as new owner Elon Musk has attempted to monetize the service, researchers are struggling to replace a once-crucial tool. Unless Twitter makes another about-face soon, it could close the chapter on an entire era of research. 

Until Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s API — which allows third-party developers to gather data — was considered one of the best on the internet. It enabled studies into everything from how people respond to weather disasters to how to stop misinformation from spreading online. The problems they addressed are only getting worse, making this kind of research just as important as ever. But Twitter decided to end free access to its API in February and launched paid tiers in March. The company said it was “looking at new ways to continue serving” academia but nevertheless started unceremoniously cutting off access to third-party users who didn’t pay. While the cutoff caused problems for many different kinds of users, including public transit agencies and emergency responders, academics are among the groups hit the hardest...

Other researchers are similarly nonplussed. “The platform went from one of the most transparent and accessible on the planet to truly bottom of the barrel,” says letter signatory Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics (IDDP) at George Washington University. Some of Tromble’s previous work, studying political conversations on Twitter, was actually funded by the company before it changed its API policies.

“Twitter’s API has been absolutely vital to the research that I’ve been doing for years now,” Tromble tells The Verge. And like Yang, she has to pivot in response to the platform’s new pricing schemes. “I’m simply not studying Twitter at the moment,” she says.

Read the full article on The Verge.