I think one of the major reasons they wanted to close the free APIs was to prevent data scraping for AI models without paying the big dollars. Of course that also meant users would be limited to the service’s own apps with their own ads so it’s a bit of a win-win for them.
I’d imagine the only people paying the insane API prices are the AI/ML companies
kungen@feddit.nu 4 months ago
I don’t know all the numbers, but the point isn’t to make money from people paying for API access, but to force people to use their official applications – which meets their goals of farming more data/advertising money/engagement/whatever.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
Right, the metrics they’ll look at are hosting costs went down 5% and ad revenue went up 10%.
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought X was to get the larger corpo users to buy in such as Nintendo share function, news orgs that would aggregate tweets, universities that used it for research qnd such. But I agree with reddit, definitely wanted to drive users to their engagement ads.
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
The whole Twitter > x thing has never made any sense. Musk misunderstood what he was signing and accidentally lost an uncountable fortune to buy a social media company and turn it from trash to the shit that skinny raccoons would turn down. Seems to be going well though.
snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Data farming to teach AI on our personal info and accomplishments.