#vss365 - Twitter Nonsense

A lot has happened since February 7th.

In case you don’t want to read my previous post on the matter (although you probably should), I’ll give some quick background.

On February 2nd, 2023, Twitter announced their API would be placed behind a paywall within one week, without also immediately announcing the pricing tiers. As I stated then and maintain now, paid APIs in and of themselves are not bad or wrong. The issues at hand were the extremely short notice and lack of pricing when the change was announced.

It is June 11, 2023. a lot has happened since that initial announcement. Like last time, I’m going to give my thoughts on the whole ordeal and provide my current plans for the future of vss365today.com.

But first, the core statement.

As of June 10, 2023, vss365today.com is in read-only mode until Twitter API access is restored. No prompt email notifications will be sent out in the mean time.

So, what all happened?

Yes.

In gist, the paywall was stalled multiple times, with very little communication about anything. On February 8, the pricing tiers were finally announced, to the sticker shock anger of many and imitation of others. In my case, it would cost me $100/mo to access the Twitter API to continue send out the latest daily prompt to over 700 subscribers every day, totaling to over 21K emails a month.

Sometime either late June 9 or early June 10, the paywall took effect, with literally no notice or warning, and as of this writing, without after-the-fact acknowledgement. This meant on Saturday morning, I woke up to no prompt in my inbox and an error message from the API saying I don't have permission to view tweets.

As I explained in my previous post, the entire management, handling, and pricing around paywalling the API has been complete chaos, and there isn't much more I can say without repeating that whole post (so you really should read it to understand my frustrations).

On one hand, I am glad the paywall is finally up because it means the limbo is over and I can finally execute my plans. On the other hand, I'm still burnt by the mismanagement and unpredictability. All of this very emotionally draining and I'm not here for it. Also, $100/mo for "students" and $5K/mo for "startups", and only going up from there on an insane level? It's no wonder why Microsoft yanked Twitter support from their ad platform and Xbox sharing.

Now that I've written out my remaining thoughts on the matter, what does this practically mean for the site? My plan breaks down into the following steps.

1. I'll probably write and send out an email to the current subscribers as a little "Hey, this is going on" notice.
2. I have updated the donation page with an updated cost breakdown and additional donation options.
3. I have set up a dedicated fund for all donations towards running the site and paying for the required services.
4. Currently, I am personally matching the monthly cost (minus the Twitter API) in contributions to the fund. This means I am spending roughly $60/mo on the site, with half of that going towards the monthly bills and the other half to the fund.
5. I will be signing up for the $100/mo Twitter API access tier (the lowest tier needed for the site to operate) as soon as I can obtain the necessary bank info. I have heard rumblings that Twitter is having trouble getting access granted, which, if they hold true, is yet another log in the mismanagement here.
6. Once I have operational API access, the finder service responsible for finding the prompts will be reactivated.
7. I will try to get the missed prompts loaded in ASAP, but depending on the length of the outage, this could take a bit of time.

My plan raises two questions that I need to answer.

1. How long will the site be in read-only mode?
2. Is the updated site cost ($360/yr to $1,560/yr, assuming no increases) sustainable?

To the first question: I don't know. It depends on how long it takes me to finalize the payment method and for Twitter to instate access. I'll be getting my part done ASAP, but for Twitter, it's anyone's guess.

To the second question: honestly, probably not. If enough people provide regular donations, I'll do all within my power to keep it online and running for as long as I can. But history shows that things like this can only last for so long. I have a lot of thoughts on this point, which will be in a forthcoming post.

I'm not sure how to end this post. There's not really a good ending, as this saga has yet to reach a conclusion.

Viva la #vss365 y vss365today, I guess.