Exactly. I do selenium scripting as my main task for work, and as soon as I heard about how high the api rates were my first through was “Jesus, it might slower than straight api calls, and the dynamic xpaths might suck, but I could write a script that scrapes the website for cheaper.” Twitter is hurting for cash right now, and I imagine his effort to raise funds is the end goal here. He instituted the api policy, learned about another side effect, and continues to with the most extreme, devoid of nuance response each time.

All “in my opinion,” of course.