Update, Feb. 9: SPD now says its accounts won’t be impacted given the new free tier announced by Twitter this week.
A change in Twitter’s API policy is forcing the Seattle Police Department to deactivate Twitter accounts it uses to provide updates about crime.
Twitter last week announced that it will no longer support free access to its API, or application programming interface, starting Feb. 9. It extended the deadline to Feb. 13 following backlash and said it would offer a $100/month paid tier for “low level of API usage,” in addition to a new form of free access.
Developers at companies and organizations such as SPD use the API tool to pull data from Twitter for use in alerts, automated bots, and more. Researchers also use the API to study misinformation.
SPD has a dedicated “Tweets by Beat” page linking to different Twitter feeds for each of Seattle’s 51 police beats. The feeds post automated tweets for crime happening in neighborhoods, one hour after a dispatcher sent a call to an officer.
“From the community members I’ve spoken to about Tweets by Beat, they find it helpful and eases their worries at times because they know what’s going on in their community,” Detective Judinna Gulpan, a public information officer with SPD Public Affairs, told GeekWire.
SPD will deactivate the accounts starting Feb. 13.
“The Department will explore available options to reactivate the accounts, and the possibility of using another program or method to release the information,” SPD said in a blog post.
Twitter’s API policy shift is the latest change under Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla chief who bought the social media giant for $44 billion last year.
Musk said last week that the “free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators.”
