[luckylion]

Getting api access at Twitter is probably too involved for many users, and I don't know whether "I want to run that program over there" would be sufficient as a reason. I don't know how it currently is, but some years ago they changed from "sign up and here's your token" to "sign up and explain to us why you need API access". Might have been after Cambridge Analytica, I don't know.

They're not overly inquisitive, but it seemed that a human judged the comment you write, and there was some delay, so it's probably not something most people would do if they want to give a third party service access.

[whatyesaid]

I mean let's be honest, they're using Mastodon which has a high effort barrier to begin with, they can create a Twitter Developer account.

The form you fill is only needed for upgraded access, it requires filling multiple pages with minimum character limits (not very Twitter like). It was approved automatically for me, but the basic API is fine for regular users. If you do any kind of analysis though, basic and upgraded Twitter APIs are useless and too rate limited even if it seems generous.

[pbronez]

Hmm I see your point, but I disagree. I think creating a Twitter developer account and getting an API key is MUCH harder than signing up for mastodon.

For example, I have a colleague who has been a big twitter user. They’re a passive listener on the site, and want to move to mastodon because people are moving. They created an account on mastodon.social and struggled to find their people. I suggested some tools that would help… and they refused on grounds that they were afraid the tool would abuse their twitter login information.

I wound up trying to explain oauth scopes. They didn’t get it and still haven’t tried. There is no way this person would sign up for a twitter dev account. But they are on Mastodon and putting some effort into figuring it out.

[vidarh]

Signups are currently 50k+ people a day, and probably about half of the people I follow on Mastodon are people of a totally non-technical background. It may feel high effort to people, but it's not something which requires any more technical understanding than getting past the "what the heck is an instance?" issue, and I've seen people get comfortable on Mastodon before even understanding that and then had it click once they there.

That said, the proportion of people making the move who also want to set up a crossposter might well be much more technically inclined.

[mindslight]

If the official API requires jumping through hoops, then use the API that Twitter's web interface uses. Run it in Selenium if you have to. No approval for that besides creating an account.