Hemphill: Twitter’s chaos is “hard to manage.”

Twitter is once again changing its policies following Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. The social media platform announced it will no longer be supporting free Application Program Interface (API) access, which grants third party users and researchers access to Twitter’s data. 

The decision will impact the owner of popular bot accounts as well as researchers who use API access to study social media and track misinformation. 

In an interview with Vice, University of Michigan associate professor Libby Hemphill, an expert on social media, says the decision will make it more difficult for researchers to access the data they need. 

“[Paying for the API will] mean that the researchers who have financial resources to access the API as a paid product are going to be able to do research that those without money to pay for the API won't be able to do,” Hemphill says. 

“I think that the pace at which Twitter changes policy is really challenging for anybody who relies on it, whether it's a user or a developer or a researcher and the chaos is just really hard to manage,” she adds.

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Read “Twitter’s Latest Chaotic Move Will Kill the Site’s Best Bots, Account Owners Say” on Vice. 

Learn more about associate professor Libby Hemphill by visiting her UMSI faculty profile. 

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Noor Hindi

Public Relations Specialist

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