It’s uncomfortable for me to think about how close my “digital traces” research is to surveillance and YOLO data mining.

Back in 2020-2021, I made the decision to pivot from Twitter as a research site in case data ever became less available—and so I could focus more on right-wing online spaces. It was a good call but still hilariously mistaken at the same time.

The headline obscures something important—that this is about research, access to data, and Terms of Service. Worrying stuff.

This is a real shame.

This is… I don’t know what this is. Besides a whole bunch of nonsense.

Some good coverage of the consequences of API restrictions for researchers—though I think we still need clarification from Twitter about whether the academic dev status is being handled separately from primary dev status.

I got my job largely because I can work with Twitter data, and my tenure application is built on the premise that I do good Twitter research. I probably shouldn’t take as much pleasure as I do from watching the platform fall apart right now, but I was ready to move on anyway.

I hated this project when I read about it in The Verge 5 years ago. I hate it even more now.