Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, February 6 (Xinhua)-- Elon Musk said that Twitter will allow robots providing "good content" free access to Twitter's API, and the platform will provide "lightweight, write-only" API for eligible robots, partly reversing his policy of changing all API access to payment.

After shutting down third-party clients such as Tweetbot and Twitterrific, Twitter announced last week that developers will need to register for a "paid base layer" to access Twitter's API from February 9. At the time, Musk defended the move by saying that free API was being "abused" by robot swindlers and spammers, adding that a subscription fee of about $100 a month "plus ID verification" could "greatly clean things up".

CTOnews.com learned that the move has drawn criticism from developers and Twitter users who create and use robots for a variety of purposes. While some robots, such as Make it a Quote and Color Schemer, exist just for entertainment, others, such as Pikaso, Remind Me of This Tweet and Thread Reader, provide useful features on websites, including screenshots, receiving reminders of certain tweets, and reading threads in a more organized layout. Many developers have announced that they will shut down their robots by the February 9 deadline.

But charging developers to access Twitter's API also provides the company with another opportunity to make money, a priority for Mr Musk when he takes office. In addition to charging users a verification fee of $8 a month, the company reportedly hopes to charge $1000 a month from brands that want to keep gold certification on the platform.

Although it seems that Musk will allow some degree of free Twitter API access, there are still many problems, and it is not clear what he thinks is "good" content, or whether the policy applies to robots created in the future, or only to robots that exist today. Until Twitter officially announced the change, the future of robots on the site was still uncertain.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.