On Wednesday I dropped $200 on X’s basic API access, figuring I’d finally know who my followers are and why my tweets are dying in the void. What I got instead was a front-row seat to how the whole damn social graph actually works.
It started simple. I wanted to boost my reach without shelling out for ads or whatever influencer/meme nonsense is hot this week. My theory was by learning about my follower’s interest, and the interests of their connections, I could drag their connection into the chatter, and create a ripple affect. This would enable me to keep saying what I want, but aim it at the people who are most likely to engage.
Could this be done? In theory, all of this data existed in the X api, but in practice, it wasn’t so simple. X API is a bit expensive, it costs $42,000 a month for unlimited data, real-time everything. $5,000 gets you “decent” access, but simultaneously too much for a side project, and too little to get it all. I ended up shilling out $200 for the basic crumbs.
Querying X against a basic API isn’t impossible, but it requires getting creative. The biggest challenge is API limits on speed and number of records you can get, plus a very stiff restriction of what you can actually get. Token limits mean you gotta batch it, nurse it along, and hope that you got what you needed, before trying again, all while your download speed is like 1999.
You can see in the screenshot below that I was able to get some information on who I follow, who follows me, what kind of interactions we have between each other, and I am also able to tap into their followers on demand.
The key here - you can’t look into the past, but you can run this tool every day to keep updating the information. Here’s where it gets really interesting —
Imagine you’re not scraping pennies—you’re the NSA, CIA, Anduril, Palantir at el. Your budget it a black box of infinite possibilities. You can farm so much information!
Spin up a dozen accounts, each with a distinct vibe. No need for fancy AI puppet. Actually hand those accounts to sharp folks with agendas and a field guide on how to steer controversy. Create accounts that focus on specific subjects, and then talk about that subject, arguing for both sides at the same time.
One account hates Trump, the other one loves him, one account hates war, the other wants to fight, one is advocating crypto growth, the other is predicting a crash at every turn…etc. Do this on a massive scale and tap into the data.
Every like, retweet, response? It’s a data point. Polar opposites mean you triangulate: Who bites on the lefty bait but ghosts the crypto grind, who loves the pew pew, who is likely to show up at a protest …etc?
Over months, you’ve got psych profiles for voter swings, brand loyalties, likelihood to act in one way or another… You can get a very, very detailed picture of specific targets, or a very broad and accurate understand of groups. If you want to segment those groups, divide them them further using a rhetoric from your other accounts and see how the groups split.
I’m running this on the cheap, trying to squeeze the most out of the little scraps of data, and I would love you to join me. $100 / month and you can start asking questions about your followers. I would love to get 10 new users to start asking more questions, and eventually get to 100 more users, so we could tap into the next tier of the API access.
The more each one of us learns from this system, the more we learn together, and visa-versa.
Got something you are dying to know about your follower graph?
Email me, and I can onboard you into the product.
— Kirill.