[jsheard]

The Twitter bot situation only seems to have got worse since they shut down free API access. LLM engagement farming bots everywhere in replies, hordes of scam bots replying if you use certain keywords, porn bots following and DMing everyone non-stop...

Evidently the people running the bots don't really care whether or not you give them an API to work with.

[Pxtl]

Reminds me of this meme:

https://www.reddit.com/r/webscraping/comments/w1ve97/virgin_...

[Retr0id]

Presumably the bots weren't using the "proper" APIs even when they existed, so as to be less easily detectable.

[extraduder_ire]

I think that coincided with them removing phone number verification for accounts. Probably due to my browser looking unusual (content blocker, linux user-agent string, other addons) any time I set up a new account and used it for a few minutes a few years ago, it'd lock the account and redirect every logged in page to one demanding SMS verification to unlock the account.

I would usually get support to manually unlock it after a few days by emailing them and mentioning why I didn't want to give them a phone number. Now the process only involves solving captchas. (and maybe some hidden waiting)