Problems with Twitter API

[charlesreid1]

We're having problems with the Twitter API. See below for explanation and proposed solution.

The Problem:

We have now run into two major problems with Twitter blocking Lucky Penny. It's a little complicated but bear with me.

Initially Lucky Penny was tweeting using an OAuth application associated with @charlesreid1dib, which was also a relatively new account. The API rate limits were low to begin with and we ran into API rate limits in testing Lucky Penny. Eventually the application was disabled and we could not make any more API calls. This shut-down happened the day before our May workshop.

The next fix was to use an OAuth application associated with my personal twitter account (Charles Reid's Imaginary Friends) and that application successfully ran Lucky Penny for about three months. But then it stopped working, literally mid-morning on Day 1 of our August workshop.

I have created an OAuth application as @nih_dcppc but I think we'll run into the same problem as before.

The REAL Problem:

Each time I have created a new application, I have filled out a form from Twitter about the purpose of my application. Each time they ask whether there will be any person from government who may possibly see a single tweet from this bot, and of course I have to say yes.

This, combined with the fact that NIH is in the bot name, means that Twitter will drag their feet and probably keep randomly shutting off API access, so we'll keep scrambling to McGyver a new solution every few months.

Proposed Solution:

We need a bot without NIH in the name.