In recent news, Twitter has decided to shut down certain API services that developers use to power their bots and services. This “botpocalypse” has taken the wider technology community by surprise, as many were surprised at the speed at which the decision to shut down was made.
The changes that Twitter has made is yet another attempt to create a more secure platform, while also reducing the amount of spam and bots on the service. The implications of these changes are far reaching, as many developers and companies have built services, tools and bot accounts that rely heavily on the APIs that are being shut down.
Twitter has long has a problem with spam and malicious accounts that bombard their users with automated messages and increase their follower counts with fake followers. Twitter’s efforts to reduce this are commendable, but the sudden changes to the API have taken many by surprise.
Among the services being shut down are streaming APIs and Site streams, which are both commonly used by developers. While this may not seem like a huge issue, it has opened up a huge can of worms as bots and services relying on these APIs will be unable to operate.
Moving forward, developers will have to adopt new technologies and approaches to their applications and bots. Developers have already started to switch over to using other server-less platforms, such as AWS Lambda and Azure Functions, to run their bots instead of using Twitter’s APIs.
The sudden changes has had major ramifications in the tech industry, as many services will have to rethink their strategies as to how they utilize Twitter. It has also led to much speculation as to what other changes the company are planning in the future, and how this could affect developers and users alike.
Although the sudden shutdown of the APIs has taken many by surprise, it is an important step in the long term effort of creating a more secure service. It will be interesting to see the ramifications of this shutdown in the months and years to come.