Twitter’s new demand compels researchers to either delete all data or pay over Rs 34 lakhs/month

Twitter has demanded that researchers delete the data they obtained under historic contacts to study Twitter, unless they agree to pay $42000 (over Rs 34 lakhs) per month. This news was first shared by iNewspaper.

Twitter used to offer a service called Decahose under which it delivered a 10% random sample of the real-time Twitter Firehose through a streaming connection. This data included details like expanded URLs, stream partitioning into 2 with each stream containing 50% volume of the Decahose stream and lastly the geographic diversity of backend systems. This data could be used by researchers or analysts to study the nature of social media conversations. The shared data was used by researchers to track spread of misinformation or extremism on Twitter.