[Air-L] Degraded and/or Dying Twitter APIs

[Shulman, Stu]

Update: the web downloader is still gone and if I had to guess, forever.
This was just a GUI in front of an API that does appear to be functioning.
I think the people who built and maintained the web front end are no longer
part of the scaled back Twitter staff. However, somebody is maintaining the
API operation and Twitter still gives out elevated access to some API
endpoints. For example, we asked for and received elevated API access
specifically to offer a new application to academics and it was approved in
three days. Watch this list for an imminent announcement about a new beta
service that was actually designed and built in 2019 to detect bots and is
just now getting to see the full light of day. The last step is to put it
behind a GUI and TrustDefender will launch. I was more than a little
surprised Twitter approved it, given what it shows about amplification
actors and actions in the ecosystem. Spoiler alert, many of the strangest
and least explained event timelines on Twitter are humans not machines.
Trust but verify.

On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 11:04 PM Silvia DalBen Furtado <
silviadalben at utexas.edu> wrote:

> I had some issues using Twitter API last week. I could not collect tweets
> from January 8 and January 9, I then I start not trusting the data I was
> collecting anymore.
>
> But I thought it could be something related to my account. Sorry I did not
> read your message before.
>
> I am also talking with some folks about this issue, but I did not heard
> from them if they also had this problem.
>
> Best, Silvia
>
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 3:51 PM Radhika G via Air-L <
> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
>
>> I see no one replied or took up this discussion…
>>
>> All I’m going to say is aaargh (yet the bearer token from twitter dev
>> accounts are working on Gephi and some other places including I think at
>> discovertext so I’ll wait and see…)
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> > On Jan 15, 2023, at 6:21 AM, Shulman, Stu via Air-L <
>> air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Does anyone know the full extent (or cause) of the current API
>> degradation
>> > at Twitter?
>> >
>> > The web front end for the "downloader" has been down for a bit now.
>> > https://developer.twitter.com/apitools/downloader
>> >
>> > I have seen reports of other API issues. Is it broken, breaking bad,
>> under
>> > repair, getting a new toll booth, or bound for the graveyard of Internet
>> > history?
>> >
>> > Should we be placing wagers...perhaps in bitcoin?
>> >
>> > ~Stu
>> > _______________________________________________
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>

-- 
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Founder and CEO, Texifter
Editor Emeritus, *Journal of Information Technology & Politics*