Why Public Data is Becoming Harder to Access Worldwide

And why this poses a threat to the freedom of our societies

Do you feel like you are trapped in a quicksand? Everything around you seems to move fast… too fast. But you, well you are stuck.

Today’s industry is being reimagined every day with new technologies almost every decade. A couple of years back we thought it would be crypto, but well… that didn’t exactly stand for long. But who knows, that boat is still sailing and may yet come back. After all, prime numbers didn’t have any use asides from being neat when they were found, and it did take us nearly 2300 years to use them in our daily societies with the invention of the RSA algorithm in 1977, a reference in terms of encryption.

But we are not here today to talk about what is past. Rather we are interested in what is to come. The next groundbreaking technology to disrupt our industry this decade is, you may have guessed it already, ChatGPT!

Initially developed and released by OpenAI in November 2022, this Large Language Model (LLM) is capable of resolving a problem most of us didn’t even know we had: having to use Google’s search engine.

All jokes aside, this behemoth of a network can answer just about anything, with varying levels of accuracy, but an unwavering amount of confidence.

To train this gargantuan, OpenAI had to collect enormous amounts of information. Officially their Chat-GPT3 model was trained on 45TB of text data taken from the Web and books.

So far so good right?

Well there’s a small catch.

OpenAI’s release had more than just the effect of wowing us. It also sent a clear signal to companies like Twitter and Reddit that their public data had a lot, lot more value than they initially thought.

As their data was mostly accessed through their APIs (Application Programming Interface), these companies are now rolling out extremely agressive API pricing plans for their data, which, to place back into context is public data as anyone can have access to a Tweet or a Reddit post (logged in or not).

Twitter started off announcing a pricing plan starting at $5 000/mo for 1 Million Tweets access monthly. To access more Tweets in one month, you starting plan would be $42 000/mo, singling out most companies from access to this platform’s data entirely. For reference, it is estimated that 500 Million tweets are redacted daily. With the first plan at $5 000/mo, you would access 1/(31*500) * 100% = 0.00645% of the monthly Tweets of the platform. Not exactly what one would call a representative chunk.

Reddit on the other hand will soon be rolling out its API for public data at $12 000 for 50 Million requests. This of course means many apps that rely on Reddit’s current API for data are likely to go down as they will not be able keep up with the new pricing plans.

Ok, so APIs that cost a lot. But why do I care? What do I make of all of this?

Well simply put, everyone looks like they are following suit. It’s only a question of time before every major public social network out there makes their public data tremendously difficult to access and equally expensive.

So this means public data is going to be increasingly hard to access, which in turns means information segmentation across the world is going to soar.

And if you’re always submitted to the same news feeds because information from feeds further out are becoming impossible to access, then you may never get to confront your opinions on important subjects with those of others.

What is Exorde’s role in all of this?

Exorde is all about making sure information circulates freely all over the world, regardless of the language and the subject, so as to piece the puzzle of information together.

We have been working around the clock to create robust systems capable of accessing the inaccessible information sources in the most neutral, transparent and decentralized way possible.

We’re aiming to become a bastion for the freedom of circulation of public knowledge worldwide by analyzing public opinions on any and all subjects in real time.

Thanks for your time!

You want to learn more about us?

Head over here: https://exorde.network/

Or here: https://twitter.com/ExordeLabs

Or here: https://discord.gg/AgRdQaMz5d

Or even here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exorde/