X reached out to me, saying we violated some ToS by selling data and selling some things that bypassed API keys.

We don't do that, never did, never will.

They linked directly to my open source code as the reason for deletion.

Code I didn't even mostly write, was hacked together from other OSS stuff

They said they'd get off our back if we paid $50k/mo for the Enterprise license

We pay $1k/mo for the yellow check and $200/mo for the dev license

Why would an enterprise account change my ability to publish open source code?

It was extortion, plain and simple, and it shouldn't be legal

I don't want to be part of a system like that. It's everything I stand against.

Debating whether to make this a legal issue or not

Pretty sure you’ll lose a legal battle against them as their ToS states plainly not to scrape data outside of the API. Essentially, all browser agents are against their ToS. 

I do think this is a bit unreasonable but then you have to consider the other side.

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But your selling agents that scrape their data correct?

Yeah but we don’t scrape their data

If we did and we made money from it I’d buy the appropriate license

They are protecting their moat. X actually has a lot in common with WSJ even though Elon is disparaging them. 

Because both put up a paywall forcing you to pay to scrape/access their data. 

Which is slightly better for the end user of their platform as well. 

Honestly I’d like to see the legal battle.