On 02 February 2023 Twitter announced the end of free access to the Twitter API:
Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 2, 2023
At the time of writing there are no details on pricing. For users with TAGS Archives this will be a breaking change, particularly if you are using the ‘easy setup’ used in TAGS v6.1.
‘Easy Setup’ was introduced in TAGS v6.1 in 2016 allowing people to use TAGS without having to create a Twitter Developer account. Instead TAGS v6.1 ‘easy setup’ uses my Twitter API credentials requiring the user to only sign in with their Twitter account.
Regardless of the pricing I’m not willing to become a Twitter API data reseller. There are various reasons for this, the main one being I’m not willing to take on the liability. TAGS has always been an ‘as is, no warranties’ project and given Twitter may make further changes to its service with little/no notice it’s a headache I’d prefer to avoid.
Warning: TAGS will remain available for anyone who wants to continue using it, but archives created with Easy Setup will stop working after February 9, 2023.
To continue using TAGS after this date you will need to use another Twitter Developer account generating/using your own custom keys. These can be entered using the TAGS > Setup Twitter Access menu option. You should only need to add your custom keys and authenticate once for all TAGS archives associated with your account to continue archiving data.
Previously it was easy to create a Twitter Developer project, but now you need to provide more information about what you want to do which then needs to be approved by Twitter. Given this I fear for many this will be the end of TAGS as a solution, but the project will remain available for anyone willing/able to do the additional setup. Comments are open if you have any questions and you can also ping me on Twitter @mhawksey