The new twitter rules will probably kill your favorite twitter bot. Here's why.

Sadness. Thats what I felt when I saw this tweet by my favorite bot - a neural net that guesses what memes are.

But what does this really mean?

Twitter announced yesterday - Feb 2nd that they will be no longer have free access to APIs. In short, these APIs allow developers to connect their own apps to twitter - like a bot posting memes, videos, or automated content. (There's obviously much more, but this is just a simple explanation.)

Most other platforms like YouTube among Instagram offer free versions of their API, and Twitter has been doing until now.

Why can't developers just pay the price?

The prices aren't just the cost of Twitter Blue, its expected to be much much more. Reputable sources are quoting just shy of USD 150, and that's the most basic tier.

Developers likely don't make much money from their bots, and it would most likely be a bad financial decision to pay 1800 USD to run a twitter bot every year.

People on twitter are really unhappy.

Elon Musk quoted abuse by "bot scammers and opinion manipulators". People aren't buying that argument though, and many are unhappy because their favorite funny or useful bots will likely stop working on February 9th.

People argue that while all the useful and fun bots will likely be removed, scammers will probably pay for the API services, since they will likely still earn an overall profit.

Just last month, Twitter shut down third party apps from working, and many have been using them as they have much more features than the conventional ones.

While its not clear its possible the 'Sign in with Twitter' functions on many websites will likely no longer work if the website/app developers choose not to pay the price. Some games like Obey Me have taken this decision. Genshin Impact warned users that this might be the case too. They are one of the top earning games on the App Store - if they don't want to pay, that's really saying something. It's possible that accounts connected only to twitter across websites might be lost to this change, though a website/app developer can always add a workaround.

In addition, there has been such short notice to such an announcement - a 7-day notice.

Such third-party developers have been a crucial gear in the cog for twitter - from coining the word 'tweet', quote tweeting, adding the hashtag and mentions functions, to making the first twitter mobile app, and the official twitter mobile app.

Why this decision?

It all comes down to money. Elon needs Twitter to start generating revenue - Twitter reportedly looses 4 million every day. He already bought it for 44 billion - and someone needs to justify that purchase. (that's 11 thousand times more than 4 million). He earlier introduced Twitter Blue, giving verified checkmarks to almost anybody who could pay - which caused the twitter community to be very unhappy about. He also fired 7500 employees, saying he had "no choice" to do so.

Is there any good news out of this news?

Back to what Elon Musk quoted as the reason for this, there will likely be less spam bots spamming your replies whenever you tweet that you have been hacked or need tech support.

Elon Musk has responded to the controversy by considering giving verified users access to the API for 'fun' posts, after Pepito the cat - a twitter account that notifies people whenever a French cat, Pépito walks into his house - responded to one of his tweets on the issue.

Twitch/YouTube Streamer @jschlatt also offered to sponsor Pépito, but of course this only covers one bot - one out of the millions out there.

So for now, lets enjoy these goofy bots. And cue sad music please.