Mike Masnick ✅It truly is amazing how Elon can know so little about the site he massively overspent to buy. The scammers aren't using the official API, dude.
mcmjolnir@mmasnick how has he **not** been completely fleeced of everything he owns? how is he **alive**?
Twitter Death Cult@mcmjolnir @mmasnick He's currently being fleeced by other billionaires who are not as stupid and who want twitter destroyed and don't care how Musk does it
Marinekko@cspam @mcmjolnir @mmasnick this is literally just a massive data mining operation imo. I don’t think he really cares about running it into the ground.
Erik S@mmasnick He may be ignorant. He may be lying. It's hard to tell with Musk.
Typo corrected (I may -> He may)
Michael@mmasnick The safe bet is that he's lying/deceitful. He lies because he can, he lies because it works for him, because other people waste time and energy evaluating his claims at face value, or trying to figure out his angle.
Yahia Lababidi
eko_dot_swf@mmasnick sure but also - surprise me one shame on you, surprise me almost every day for the last three months shame on me
LindaNYC2VT Ⓥ 🌊🐖🐄🐓🦃🐬🐝🦋🦇@mmasnick @Burito_Bandito_ He’s the scammer.
Stu Duerson, machina exo deusDriving Twitter into the ground will clean things up greatly.
Any contribution to the assets of Elon Musk embiggens him. Consider whether he is a force for good. Or Not.
Shane Joseph 🐘
Travis Newton 👨💻@mmasnick $100 A MONTH for API access?! He needs to just be honest: "I over paid for this toy, pay it off for me!"
random thoughts
Raptor 
@travis @mmasnick and like most of his decisions it'll probably make thousands of dollars from the relatively few takers at most while costing millions from lost advertising. API access was literally free user engagement for him with development being paid out of pocket by external devs. If he thinks all the bots posting quotes, puppies, etc are all going to pay $100 to keep doing that for free he's insane.
@raptor85 @mmasnick Oh absolutely. But I doubt he’ll sell enough of anything to meet his annual $1 billion payment. And that’s not including the other payments he hasn’t been making. The creditors are going to have to repo their site and sell it to Microsoft or Verizon and take a few Falcon 9 rockets to get anything back.
Doug Bostrom100 times as much principle as anybody should pay.
System IV, Building K@mmasnick Just a sidenote, but as I bang on the drum here constantly about it, thank you for posting a screenshot instead of linking traffic back there. (And since I’m a former Tesla owner, typing it all out, fuck Musk. Is he not just… an idiot heir?).
Hunter Perrin@mmasnick $100 a month for API access is pretty outrageous too. Can you think if another service charging that much for API access? Let alone a service that's as fundamentally simple as Twitter.
Chris AD@mmasnick this is just pap for his eager little bootlickers to swallow and regurgitate all over comments sections like those at Techdirt :(
We Can Be Gyros@mmasnick he starts with yeah, it really makes him so cool. 
Louis Ingenthron@mmasnick Also, there is absolutely a verification process. Before gaining access, you have to essentially submit an application with an essay explaining to Twitter why you want access before they'd consider granting you an account (that they can presumably easily track). The sign up process was arduous enough to put me off signing up to make a joke bot.
Or, at least, all that was required before Musk took over.
JeanJaures@mmasnick Don’t attribute to ignorance that which is caused by rank dishonesty. He’s not uninformed; he just lies. Apartheid boy is a pig.
Curtis Wilde@mmasnick Exactly. The amount of knowledge and experience to just get started with the api is a tall hurdle (intentionally, I’m sure). Why write custom code and debug when you can just plug in credentials through a cheap phone?
🤖 The Droid Engineer@mmasnick All i see is "opinion manipulators" and "...bots to do bad things."
We're straight here that he's not talking about right-wing opinion manipulators, right?
Shannon@droidengineer @mmasnick He's most definitely not talking about right-wing opinion manipulators.
jmht@mmasnick heh http (the web site) is an API too, of course. Going to start charging everyone $100/mo?
That Anonymous CowardMike *takes your face in my hands* this is important follow along...
Elmo doesn't care, this is all performance art for the people who believe he is a genius.
He's not as gifted at it as the mango colored one, but the trade off is some of his companies make money.
It never mattered what Elmo said, the faithful will always support him & attack anyone who points out the car never fscking drove itself.
Raymond Jett@mmasnick I think his rant is targeted at Christopher Bouzy and his bot detection software. The same cbouzy who is bringing Spoutible online, a competitor to Twitter.
Mary Beth Frezon@mmasnick Who the hell would pay $100 a month? I take it that this will break a lot of Wordpress plug-ins that post to people's websites or as the one I have used for a lot of years, posts from my site to twitter. Oh well. That one will work til it doesn't and by then it will all be over for me anyway.
Justin Derrick@mmasnick Someone doesn’t want competition from any OTHER “opinion manipulators” says man who personally decides which journalists to kick off Twitter, and which nazi misogynist racist pigfuckers get to have their banned accounts unlocked.
Walken@mmasnick Thanks for the screenshot! Really don’t like to give any clicks to posts from the birdsite these days.
BMXjim@mmasnick
Of course! hourlykittenbot and randomfuturamapics will be raiding their piggy banks as we speak
Of course! hourlykittenbot and randomfuturamapics will be raiding their piggy banks as we speak
Dwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦@mmasnick I expect Musk to lie at this point. Often, and almost on a schedule.
🌲🧿 "Max"t💽d🏵️n 🔎🍄@mmasnick "opinion manipulators" says the guy who purchased an entire social media company to "manipulate opinion".
Nathan Beddoe@mmasnick Damn, 100 a month is obscenely expensive.
Dan@mmasnick how the hell is he going to verify ID? Like even ignoring most of the planet - has he worked out API access to the ID databases in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, and EU? Is he hiring a team of people to manually verify by calling into the proper authorities?
Or is this another “do they have a working credit card? COOL! You are in!” Type “verification”?
jadeabliss@mmasnick he’s probably lying. I’m thinking it’s just a money play…
Joé McKen@mmasnick Honest, completely ignorant question: Is there some other kind of API that scammers use? Is that a thing?
@joemcken there are unofficial APIs and other tools...
Parody@mmasnick I wouldn't be surprised if he knows little about the tech. From what I understand a developer asked him to identify problems on the stack and he couldnt.
TurboQuokka@mmasnick TBH I kinda can’t wait until he gets to the “Finding Out” portion of this act, and everything that made Twitter enjoyable ceases to function. I don’t think he understands just how much of Twitter’s traffic relies on API access, whether it’s 3rd party clients or useful and/or entertaining bot accounts (or automated local government updates, severe weather warnings, etc.)
Heidi Helen Pilypas@mmasnick I love how he’s so free speech that anyone who disagrees with him is an “opinion manipulator.”
Mustard867@mmasnick If I had to guess, he's announcing it at such a high price so he can later announce a lower price, thinking people who use the API are complete idiots and will think they're getting a deal. He did the same thing for the blue checkmark, but his initial price only lasted for less than a day before Stephen King called him out and he came up with a random lower number.
Meera Datey@mmasnick What techniques do twitter scammers use?
API is much easier route than web site scrapping.
API is much easier route than web site scrapping.
Bee O'Problem 
@meera_datey @mmasnick boiler rooms. Get a bunch of low paid temps to post copypasta across dozens of accounts.
Covidiocracy@mmasnick Bots and scammers? But, but, I thought he fixed all of that back in November! 😂
carol@mmasnick
Just $100/month! Not so easy for many.
Just $100/month! Not so easy for many.
Chris_Swan@mmasnick The sad thing is that, as a computer science educator, I used the Twitter API as an example and used it to teach social media integration. It's not the only API but back then ( I don't work in school anymore), it was popular with young people and not to onerous to get working. 100$ a month - get along with you!!!
@Chris_Swan @mmasnick I found it pretty straightforward to write a simple Discord notifier bot. That might be a usable alternative depending on what you're going for.
@beeoproblem @mmasnick yep, I think that would work. Will deffo look into, thank you 🙂
TheJen@mmasnick He is not a smart man.
costrike@mmasnick I'm having a hard time taking him at his word on this.
schoolingdiana@mmasnick We all fell for his mom’s hype that he’s a genius. Thank goodness she never went into advertising; that was quite the sales job she did on us all.
xs4me2@mmasnick And guess the same is true for his other businesses. Just a guy with more money than brains.
Sammy@mmasnick "opinion manipulators"? I mean between twitter bots posting foxes and mursko's prior tweeting only one of the two is in court for illegal manipulation of people's opinions.
NumbCat9 💜s trans folx 🏳️⚧️@mmasnick why do folks not remember he ended up having to be forced to spend that much after trying to back out desperately? it makes it so much more humiliating
Ajaj Alawneh 
@mmasnick his tweet by itself sounds like a scam 😂
@mmasnick Twitter should be paying developers to generate content.
Camiel Hirschberg@mmasnick At this point, things like "bots" and "doxing" from his mouth feels like " the terrorist" in 2002, just using buzzwords that sound scary to push your agenda.