来源：《自然》
原文刊登日期：2023年2月14日
Twitter has long offered academics free access to its API, an unusual approach that has been instrumental in the rise of computational approaches to studying social media. So when the company announced on 2 February that it would end that free access in a matter of days, it sent the field into a tailspin. “Thousands of research projects running over more than a decade would not be possible if the API wasn’t free,” says Patty Kostkova, who specializes in digital health studies at University College London.
Twitter长期以来一直向学者免费提供其API，这是一种不同寻常的方法，在研究社交媒体的计算方法的兴起中发挥了重要作用。因此，当该公司在2月2日宣布将在几天内结束免费访问时，该领域陷入了一片混乱。伦敦大学学院专门从事数字健康研究的帕蒂·科斯特科娃表示：“如果API不是免费的，在十多年里开展的数千个研究项目都将难以继续。”
Since then, researchers have been anxiously awaiting further details of Twitter’s plans. The date that free access is due to end has been pushed back twice: first on 8 February, and then in an announcement on 13 February that said the new platform would be unveiled in “a few more days”. Furthermore, key information about a proposed new payment plan is missing, says David Lazer, a political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The company says that it will offer tiered pricing, with the cheapest version costing US$100 a month for “low-level” access. But it hasn’t said what that will entail. “People can have different orders of magnitude in their imagination as to what ‘low-level’ means,” says Lazer. “If they’re optimizing the pricing for corporate customers, there’s no way academics are going to be able to afford it.”
此后，研究人员一直在焦急地等待Twitter计划的进一步细节。免费访问的截止日期被推迟了两次：首先是2月8日，然后是2月13日的公告，称新平台将在“几天后”推出。此外，位于马萨诸塞州波士顿市的东北大学的政治学家大卫·拉泽表示，有关拟议中的新支付计划的关键信息缺失。该公司表示，它将提供分级定价，最便宜的版本每月花费100美元用于“低级别”访问。但它还没有说明“低级别”会提供什么。拉泽说：“人们对‘低级’的理解可能有不同的数量级，如果他们在为从企业客户那里获得最大利润而优化定价，那么学术界就不可能负担得起。”
The rapid change in policy will cause difficulties for some European Union-funded projects, whose proposals were written with the assumption that API access would remain free. And prices could quickly mount if each researcher on a project had to pay the monthly fee.
Twitter政策的迅速变化将给一些欧盟资助的项目带来困难，这些项目的申请提案是在假定API访问将保持免费的前提下编写的。如果每个项目的研究人员都必须支付每月的费用，需要的科研经费可能会迅速上涨。
Even if well-funded researchers find a way to get the data they need, the policy change will exacerbate inequalities for students or researchers from low-income countries, for whom the monthly fees could be too high to sustain long-term studies. “Twitter is a global platform, and this decision has global ramifications,” says Renee DiResta, research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University in California. “Discontinuing free access will break free tools developed to democratize research.”
即使资金充足的研究人员找到了获得所需数据的方法，推特政策变化也会加剧对低收入国家学生或研究人员的不平等，对他们来说，每月的费用可能太高，无法维持长期研究。“推特是一个全球平台，这一决定具有全球影响，”加州斯坦福大学斯坦福互联网观测站的研究经理ReneeDiResta说。“停止免费访问将破坏为使研究民主化而开发的免费工具。”
The move also runs counter to the spirit of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which came into force last November, says Claes de Vreese, who studies political communication at the University of Amsterdam. As a very large social-media platform, Twitter could eventually be compelled under the legislation to ensure data transparency and access for researchers.
阿姆斯特丹大学研究政治传播的克拉斯·德·弗里斯表示，此举也与去年11月生效的欧盟《数字服务法案》的精神背道而驰。作为一个非常大的社交媒体平台，推特最终可能会根据这项立法被迫确保数据透明度和研究人员的访问权限。