X makes posting links through its API more expensive

Social Network X has made posting links through its API more expensive. The company said the change is designed to thwart spam and “vectors of abuse.” The new pricing increased costs from $0.01 per link to $0.20

Last week, X developer account to publish Changes in their API rates. The two most notable increases were an increase in the link post price and an increase in the post price, which rose from $0.01 to $0.15 per post.

This step may discourage many publications from posting links. For example, technology news aggregator Techmeme She stopped adding links to original articles in her X posts this week. Instead, the posts say “Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!”

Earlier this week, Techmeme said a price increase was one of the reasons it removed the links, which it said might come back later. The post was also transmitted Neiman Laboratory The study, which indicated that including links with posts on X led to decreased engagement.

X’s head of product, Nikita Beer, refuted the study’s findings and said the accounts included in the study were “usual headlines + link labels” and did not post any additional context. Him too He replied According to Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera, there is “no code that unpromotes links.”

He added that Techmeme should post a screenshot of the reactions to the news with the link.

Earlier in the week, Rivera reacted to the API pricing changes and said this would force news sites to pay hundreds of dollars or publish manually.

“I think they’re saying if you have a news site that tweets links, and you don’t manually tweet, you’re now going to have to pay X hundreds of dollars a month?” he Argue.

The debate about X reducing the reach of linked posts is nothing new. a few years ago, a company He cuts Headlines from link previews on the platform but The change came back a few weeks later.