Twitter restores free API access for emergency, transport, and weather alerts

3 years ago 1

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Twitter is ready to backtrack on its decision to shut off its free API used by emergency, transport, and weather services to share alerts.

The platform has restored free access to API for verified government and public services for “critical purposes” such as sharing emergency notifications, weather alerts, and transportation updates.

“One of the most important use cases for the Twitter API has always been public utility,” the Twitter Dev account said in a post.

“Verified gov or publicly owned services who tweet weather alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications may use the API, for these critical purposes, for free.”

Twitter announced a three-tier subscription strategy for its API in March 2023.

Basic access costs $100 (R1,844) a month and features a fixed cap on Tweets, while businesses will have to use multiple enterprise-level tiers — which can cost thousands of dollars a month — to meet their needs.

Its announcement included limiting free access to bots and testers that only needed to write posts. Its shutoff for other users broke multiple apps and services that relied on the free API for sharing and content streams.

While Twitter made its customers aware of the cutoff, it didn’t specify the exact timing and failed to explain the impact of the shutoff.