Now, Twitter says it will no longer require researchers pay for premium or enterprise developer access and will instead make the “full history of public conversation” — what the company refers to as its full-archive search endpoint — available to any researcher or developer who applies as part of the launch of a new academic research track.

“Our developer platform hasn’t always made it easy for researchers to access the data they need, and many have had to rely on their own resourcefulness to find the right information. Despite this, for over a decade, academic researchers have used Twitter data for discoveries and innovations that help make the world a better place,”

the company is making a concerted effort to convince researchers it wants to help them, especially now that social media discourse has become more crucial in understanding online misinformation, election interference, hate speech, and other topics that took center stage during and after the 2020 US election.

Twitter says it’s also giving approved applicants a higher monthly tweet volume cap of 10 million tweets, which is 20 times higher than what was available on the standard free track before.

For now, the company is now opening up access to independent researchers or journalists. You’ll have to be a student or part of an academic institution. Twitter also says it will be not be providing access to data from accounts that have been suspended or banned, which could complicate efforts to study hate speech, misinformation, and other types of conversations that violate Twitter rules.