This thread is to allow for active community discussion surrounding the proposal by Gold Boi for his Governance Twitter Bot. The full proposal can be found at the following link: StormX_Governance_Bot_Proposal.pdf - Google Drive
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Just wanted to update everyone on a potential slight bump in the road.
If you follow any Twitter gimmick bots accounts, you may have seen them post about no longer being available on 9th February. This is no isolated incident.
The official Twitter Dev account posted this last week: https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1621026986784337922
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead
Unfortunately, the Governance bot outlined in this proposal (and the StormX Statistics Bot) both rely on utilising the Twitter API to post tweets. This is bad news for Twitter developers everywhere (both inside and outside of StormX) and will massively affect the website.
Twitter has been a great place for developers to tinker with programming skills. This will greatly neuter that.
I have been discussing this news with @SVCE ever since I stumbled across it, discussing potential workarounds, should the need arise.
One potential solution I had toyed with was to pay the API access out of pocket. My theory was that it could not cost more than the current Twitter Blue subscription ($8 /month).
There has not been much more information or motivation I could find until I found this tweet reply from Elon Musk: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1621259936524300289
Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators. There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things.
Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.
I feel as if this is wildly inflated but in my opinion, $100 /month for API access is insane. Most other social media websites run their API access for free. Unfortunately, I cannot justify $100 /month coming out of my own pocket so that option isn’t available.
Where does that lead us going forward with this bot?
Unfortunately, I’m not too sure at this stage.
This change is affecting millions of users and many accounts set up via the API. My optimal solution is hoping that this change gets reversed. It seems very radical and has gathered a lot of negative feedback already. From where I stand, it does not deter bot scammers and opinion manipulators as if they are making money out of it, $100 is a minimal amount to pay. This will deter people who learn programming skills and put it to use in their own time, as not many will pay that much money for a hobby like this.
If the change does go through as described, I will have to seek out alternative methods/frameworks that give a bot a chance to post. Normally, the programming community is very good at finding workarounds.
Failing that, I may have to reevaluate where we host this bot. If Twitter isn’t an option, I’ll need to find another medium to host and post daily metrics. That will be a challenge in itself and will be the most difficult option.
All in all, it’s a bit of a “wait and see”. We’ll have much more information on the 9th February and I can assess the damage (if any).
In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions to get around this roadbump, I’m very keen to hear!
Thanks for sharing this important update. My general experience is that at time Elon does saber rattling just to shake things up. If you’re OK with this approach, I would propose that we proceed towards a vote starting on the 14th and see what, if anything, comes of the discussion on the fees. There’s no way I’d expect you to have to shoulder the monthly cost for the bots. But once we get more information on the magnitude of this matter, I’m sure we’ll be able to make the best decision we can at that point in time.
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My general experience is that at time Elon does saber rattling just to shake things up
I share that view, which is why crossing fingers for a reduction or outright reversal is not the craziest solution to have, at this time.
I’m fine with going forward with the vote on the 14th and as you say, we can tackle any roadblocks that might come up, if they do.
I’ll keep everyone updated.
We could always self-host this on the likes of a RaspberryPi. Sounds a little crude, but it’s amazing what you can install on these devices, from ad blockers to small home entertainment servers etc. I’d imagine the bot wouldn’t be too demanding of resources as it’s not being “hit” by requests, rather issuing updates to everyone else.
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That’s a really good suggestion - I do have a few Raspberry Pis knocking about somewhere, and have been tinkering with them but never tried anything as big as hosting.
Thanks for the guide, I’ll be taking a look at this and will try and use it to get it working, if needed!