Elon Musk SXSW 2018
Twitter owner Elon Musk proposed charging $100 a month for access to Twitter's API.
  • Elon Musk proposed charging $100 a month for access to Twitter's API.
  • He said the $100 fee along with ID verification for Twitter's API would clean up "bad" bots.
  • Free API was being "badly abused" by bot scammers, Musk tweeted.

Elon Musk on Thursday suggested charging $100 a month for access to Twitter's application program interface (API).

In a tweet, Musk said free API was being "abused badly" by "bot scammers & opinion manipulators." It was easy for 100,000 bots "to do bad things" when there was no cost or verification process in place for API access, he said.