I was teaching a hands on workshop (meetup) on how to use the Twitter API a few months ago, and the hardest part for everybody was getting those API keys, clicking through several pages, checking boxes, having it emailed to you.

Then it turned out Twitter refused half of the attendees the API key.. (maybe they thought it was spam coming from the same wifi, same time).

So then I just gave out my API key to the rest of the class, and in a few minutes it was blocked..

For a service that has a history of empowering users to protest and to spread news in crisis situations, it's a shame their API is so locked down.

Sorry, looks like I did not make that clear enough. Was not meant to be an objection, totally understand why they do it.