Comment by dotandgtfo

Access to read 1 million posts through the X API costs $5000/month. Enterprise access to their API costs $42 000 per month.

Multiple researchers are being told by X that they must pay this fee to get access[1][2][3].

X has recently been fined for not providing this access to researchers. Both for the organic engagement, and for paid advertising. [4]

The pricing of X's API is exorbitant and orders of magnitude higher than arguably higher quality datasets like Reddit. One million posts through the Reddit API costs $2.40.

The pricing scheme is obviously not value based and is clearly designed to limit data access to researchers. As users here note, studying recommender systems requires studying the inputs and outputs of the system. Platforms are rightly not mandated to present the inputs due to privacy concerns. But they are mandated to make the outputs available. And they aren't. "Open sourcing" their algorithm is not a replacement for this, it's an obvious a ploy to present themselves as transparent.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07340

[2] https://devcommunity.x.com/t/academic-twitter-access-is-dead...

[3] https://devcommunity.x.com/t/apply-academic-research-access/...

[4] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...