By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, Elon Musk has said he is considering legal action against Microsoft over plans to drop the social media service MS advertisement platform, Smart Campaigns.
Musk accused Microsoft of illegally using Twitter’s data for “training”.
“They trained illegally, using Twitter’s data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
When queried by a follower if he has other long-term plans such as charging for access to its API will reduce traffic to the platform, Musk replied that he is open to ideas.
He however doubled down on his claims that the IT company was “ripping off” data from Twitter.
“I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution,” he said.
Tech company, Microsoft had in a statement shared via the company’s website stated that the platform which enables ad buyers to manage their various social media accounts will no longer support Twitter with effect from April 25.
“Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter,” the release read. “As of April 25, 2023, you’ll be unable to: access your Twitter account through our social management tool, create and manage drafts or tweets, view past tweets and engagement, and schedule tweets.”
However, other social media platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, and Instagram, as well as Microsoft’s LinkedIn will continue to be available on the advert service.
No explanations were given for the decision. It however comes after Twitter announced fees for access to its Application Programming Interface.
Twitter’s API, which provides third parties with broad access to data that users have chosen to share publicly, was previously free.
However, the company announced recently that it would begin charging a monthly fee of $42,000 for access in a bid to raise its revenue.
