The robots.txt file for Twitter is geared towards limiting the accessibility of general purpose crawlers. Notable rules include Disallow: /, which essentially blocks the entirety of the site to unauthorized bots. This restriction applies universally across all agents, barring a few exceptions for certain search engine bots such as Googlebot and Bingbot.

Limited exceptions exist in the form of Allow: /i/streams/stream/* and Allow: /i/broadcasts/stream/* which permit certain site operations. However, these allowances do not grant extensive permission to traverse the site for general web scrapers. Based on the explicit disallow directive and minimal permit entries, Twitter's robots.txt clearly indicates a restrictive stance towards web scraping. Exceptions exist only for a limited set of paths, granting restrictive and selective access to non-whitelisted bots.

The terms of service for Twitter (X) include explicit statements about automated access and data extraction. The terms state:

"access, search, or attempt to access or search the Services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to the applicable terms and conditions), unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter. Note that crawling the Services is permissible if done in accordance with the provisions of the robots.txt file."

This indicates that scraping or automated access is generally restricted to approved interfaces, with a limited allowance for crawling that respects robots.txt. The restriction is framed broadly and applies across the service, which effectively covers both public and logged‑in areas. As with many online contracts, enforceability can depend on whether a user has explicitly agreed to the terms (e.g., by creating or using an account), even though the document frames the rules as universally applicable.

Twitter provides an official API (the X API) that serves as the sanctioned means for automated access, typically subject to registration, rate limits, and other usage constraints. The terms and related policies also imply that bypassing barriers such as logins, rate limits, or CAPTCHAs would violate the rules, and potential consequences include actions like IP blocking, account suspension, and legal remedies. In practice, scraping is only allowed under specific conditions—namely, through approved interfaces or crawling consistent with robots.txt and any written permissions.