2 years ago Freenode started dying, and it's deja vu all over again

Summary: Twitter is making moves that destroy itself every single day or at least every single week; while the media obsesses over some blue 'NFTs' there are vastly worse changes underway and underneath; Twitter is dismantling the very core of Twitter (to most users this isn't visible but it is profound)

The Techrights IRC network -- and our IRC community -- will turn 15 next month (the channel registration was in May 2008, albeit with a different name and under Freenode, i.e. a third party network). Over the years we've used more bots than we can remember. Some were developed by others, some were developed by us, and sometimes we modified other networks' programs. This diverse combination of programs gave us access, usually over API pipelines, to Twitter, Identi.ca, Fediverse etc. Those were like a fashion and the APIs too kept breaking. In 2018 Twitter shut many applications out of API access and last night Twitter took that a step further: it basically suspended lots and lots of applications -- to the point of breaking one of our bots. I've since then 'fixed' the issue by surgically removing any connections to Twitter, but one can imagine that others were deeply dependent on such APIs and the traffic/activity at Twitter will nosedive.

Just before midnight last night I got the following E-mail message (there was a prior one dated earlier this month):

Application suspension notice

Hello,

This is a notice that your app - IRC bot for techrights.org - has been suspended from accessing the Twitter API. However, you can self-serve reactivate your app for free.

Please take the following steps to get your app quickly running again on the new Free or Basic plans available at developer.twitter.com:

1. Subscribe to either Free or Basic via our website. 2. When signing up, you will be able to pick 1 (Free) or 2 (Basic) apps that you want to remain active. They will be reactivated automatically after you complete your sign-up. 3. Please update the code in your app to use v2 endpoints - this is valid to all endpoints except for media upload endpoints which are not currently supported on v2 so you can continue to use those on v1.1.

We apologize for any inconveniences this transition might have caused. By following these steps, you can continue to seamlessly use the Twitter API.

For more information, please refer to our developer community forums.

Regards,

Twitter Developer Platform

"Subscribe to either Free or Basic via our website" means start paying the world's corrupt billionaire some monthly fees.

We strongly urge people to abandon social control media. Things will be getting worse, not better. Any time still spent in these platforms is time wasted, including in Mastodon.

This is not a drill. This is not a drill. I repeat. This is not a drill. Quit social control media. You won't regret it. You might (later) regret not doing this sooner. ⬆