Researchers using Twitter's previously free Decahose data service will soon have to pay a fee of $42,000 a month to continue using the service and retain their data.
Decahose, a streaming service that gives scientists unlimited access to around 10% of all tweets in real time, has been a pillar for scholarly research on myriad topics, including emergency response, law enforcement-related activities, political disinformation, and extremism.
Earlier this year, due to Elon Musk's purchase of the company, Twitter Announced it would start charging for access to its numerous APIs with rates ranging from $100 to $42,000 per month.
For Academia, we are looking for new ways to continue serving this community. Meanwhile, the Free, Basic, and Enterprise tiers are available for academics. stay tuned for @TwitterDev Learn more.
— Twitter Developer (@TwitterDev) March 29, 2023
Academics and universities using the Decahose service will be required to pay the "enterprise" rate of $42,000 per month based on the new rules and the amount of data available reportedly drops from 10% of total live tweets to 0.3%.
According to a report in the British publication Yo news, the researchers were recently sent an email explaining They could start paying for your access or delete the data they have obtained:
"Researchers who do not sign the new contract 'will have to delete all stored and cached Twitter data on their systems.' Researchers will be required to post screenshots 'showing evidence of deletion'. They have been given 30 days after their agreement expires to complete the process.”
The timing of this change is noteworthy, coming just days after Musk joined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in announcing the latter's candidacy for the White House in the 2024 United States presidential election.
If executed as planned, the impending change in Decahose access could stifle global research efforts to study election misinformation and social manipulation ahead of the 2024 election, just as it is in what has been described as one of the most politically active social media platforms in the world.
Beyond investigating misinformation, the price changes would also limit the academy's ability to study Internet-related crimes such as human trafficking and financial scams. In addition, Decahose has served as one of the largest repositories of human sentiments on the Internet: a data source that generates insights and predictions on almost every imaginable societal-related research topic.
Related: Elon Musk threatens Microsoft with lawsuit, claims AI trained on Twitter data
Much of the data used to study Cryptocurrency sentiment, for example, comes from the data silos of Twitter and Reddit. By limiting access to this data, Twitter could hinder both the ongoing investigation and anticipate new efforts.
One explanation for the price hike could involve Musk's ongoing efforts to ensure that tech companies don't use Twitter data to train their AI systems.
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