Alex Barredo, who runs @big tech alertHe told BuzzFeed News that he’s open to paying a small fee to keep a popular bot running, but not if it costs $100 a month. He has other options as well. He recognizes that most spam bots in the real world don’t operate using APIs (i.e. charging for API access doesn’t actually wipe out spam), So one option he’s considering is reworking the bot to avoid doing that. No API required. He’s also looking to open source it or move it to his own website or another platform.
“It’s been fun and really brought more value to Twitter,” Barredo told BuzzFeed News.
Some bots are fun and surprising additions to your timeline.Joe Schoech of Vermont does @_restaurant_bot (random photo of the restaurant from Google Maps), @_weather_bot_ (current weather conditions from randomized locations around the world), @Every Good Fellatio (screenshot every second of the movie goodfellas), and some others. He also has no plans to pay and is considering moving them all over to Mastodon.
“It’s over,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Bot is probably the best part of Twitter he is! I follow them a lot. They are cool and weird. Fuck Elon, I didn’t like that guy.”
Neil Freeman, who runs @everylotnyc, a bot that tweets pictures of each parcel on Google Street View from tax records, shares a similar sentiment. “Any amount would be too much to pay to post on a site that doesn’t ban Nazis,” he told BuzzFeed News.
Brooklyn-based designer and programmer John Emerson operates 24 bots. Most of them are bots that tweet images from various museum collections. He told BuzzFeed News he would abandon the bot if he had to pay to keep it running. “There have been ideas for more active, interactive bots, but it’s clear that Twitter is no longer the place for that kind of experimentation and innovation,” he said.
Other bots are just for fun. @ca_dmv_bot tweets a vanity plate rejected by the California Department of Motor Vehicles with DMV reasons. Creating a bot Los Angeles magazine article It turns out that they are often incredibly funny about the rejected plates.
