I think they do. One person writes to the API to post content two other people will see + view ads against.

Though a lot of the API usage is for content scraping, analytics and surveillance ("we are monitoring the internet for you")

You're sounding very confident, so I'm sure you have a source for that claim.

Besides, even if 90% of the API usage is for scraping and does not impact the bottomline, it's still a smart business decision to leave the API open if the remaining 10% are for posting content that brings in views and thus ad impressions that generate more money than the API costs to run.

It's the main usage described in the "Twitter Files" (internal docs of Twitter which were openly leaked on Twitter).

That shouldn't be possible, API request limits for 3rd party keys were greatly reduced in 2018 to less than what is available for 1st party clients. Extracted 1st party keys or Web scraping would be used for that purpose.

API calls just grabbing data may not generate impressions but people follow bots that utilize this API and (some) bot-generated content generates interactions: likes, shares, comments.

Twitter may be heading closer towards becoming a ghost town.

Yep. Tearing down the ecosystem to support the product.

Whether it’s Elon or someone else, this shows a total lack of understanding of what made Twitter ubiquitous.

What ecosystem? I might be dim or out of touch but I’ve never seen anything related to Twitter outside of the app itself.

It's not an app it's a website.

What's with these cell phone people calling everything APPS? Hi. They're WEBSITES. Just because you might use a stupid cell phone app to access the stupid website doesn't mean it's no longer a website.

Use the right words and stop recording video vertically. I hate all of you cell phone people.

> Use the right words and stop recording video vertically. I hate all of you cell phone people.

Wouldn't the right words be "smartphone people?"

No.

Notes

Also named cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone.

Sorry, imho it’s best consumed via the mobile app. Indeed all these “web-apps” should just be taken out of the browser and leave it to hypermedia experience. They can be their own native app just as fine

Are you nuts? Yeah I want 10,000 icons on my desktop rather than just one browser.

Man this generation blows. No wonder you're fine with 10 different game publisher clients, 10 different movie publisher clients, and 500 different "apps" to access websites. Keep recording vertically dude. (GEEZUS)

I created a bunch of lists and basically just follow those, rarely engaging. In a way, I am thankful to Elon for helping me shed my compulsive Twitter usage. He unwittingly performed a public service.

API writes absolutely generate ad impressions.