Posting links to X through custom social media software just got a lot more expensive. On Monday, X significantly increased how much it costs to post a URL via the X API, which is what third-party tools use to hook into the platform. It now costs $0.20 when a link is posted, up from $0.01.
Any change to make posting links more expensive will likely make X even less attractive to publishers than it already is, especially given the widely held suspicion that linking news articles can lower a post’s reach. The issue came up in a recent spat between Nate Silver and X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, who claimed that links are “not deboosted.” But a recent study from Nieman Lab analyzing posts from 18 large media outlets found that links “do seem to hurt news publishers” on X.
The price hike is already affecting a notable X account in the tech world: the news aggregator Techmeme. Until Sunday, Techmeme’s posts on X would have short headlines summarizing news and linking to the source. But now, the link has been replaced with a message: “Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!” Naturally, this makes Techmeme’s X posts a lot less useful.
Techmeme now isn’t including links in its tweets because, “The cost for posting links using X’s API increased today by 1900%,” the Techmeme X account wrote on Monday. Techmeme also pointed to the Nieman Lab study.
Bier pushed back to Techmeme, saying that the issue with the cited study is that X posts need to have something that people can react to for the algorithm to “get signal” and that the accounts referenced in the study were “habitual headline+link posters with no additional content.” Bier also said, in a reply to Techmeme founder and CEO Gabe Rivera, that “I am telling you directly: there is no code that is deboosting links.” Bier offered to “pay personally for the API price bump,” for which the aim was “to reduce search spam attacks.”
“I really doubt this API price hike will fix X’s spam problem long term, but hey, not my call!” Rivera tells The Verge. Rivera also pointed to other places users can find Techmeme, including its website, RSS feed, and newsletter. “And we post links to Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon,” he says.
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