Tweepy: Cannot upload media using Twitter API v1. Error type: `simplejson.errors.JSONDecodeError`, error: `Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)`

Question

`# Create Client object with OAuth 2.0
 client = tweepy.Client(
  consumer_key=self.twitter_consumer_key,
  consumer_secret=self.twitter_consumer_secret,
  access_token=self.twitter_access_token,
  access_token_secret=self.twitter_access_token_secret
 )

# Create API v1.1 object for media upload
auth = tweepy.OAuth1UserHandler(
  self.twitter_consumer_key,
  self.twitter_consumer_secret,
  self.twitter_access_token,
  self.twitter_access_token_secret
 )
 api = tweepy.API(auth)

 try:
    # Simple media upload without chunked option
    print("Attempting media upload...")
    with open(image_path, 'rb') as image_file:
         media = api.simple_upload(filename=image_path, file=image_file)
         print(f"Media uploaded successfully. Media ID:{media.media_id}")`                                                       

I am using a v1 client object for uploading media, and a v2 client object for creating a tweet. However, the program stops at uploading media with the following two errors:

The first time I run it gives me an 403 Forbidden error. The second time I run it gives me <class 'simplejson.errors.JSONDecodeError'> type error with the error string as Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0). I checked for a response object but seems like it doesn't return any response object. I have tried both api functions: media_upload and simple_upload and I get the same error.

Function call for medi_upload: media = api.media_upload( filename=image_path, chunked=True )

Here are the configurations of my app project on my Twitter dev account

App permissions, type of app App info

Does anyone know how to solve this? Thanks in advance!

Expecting the media file to be successfully uploaded. Tried different media files, checked if the file is present and opens properly before the function call. The file opens and prints the file size ( around 1-2 MBs ) before the media_upload / simple_upload function calls, but fails when the API makes the media upload call. Tried downgrading and upgrading the tweepy package to 4.14.0, 4.9.0, and 4.12.0. I still get the same results across all the package versions.

Edit: Adding tracebacks for both errors:

1. 403 Forbidden:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 540, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 532, in main
    publisher.post_to_twitter(temp_path, description)
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 391, in post_to_twitter
    media = self.twitter_v1.media_upload(image_path)
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 3566, in media_upload
    return self.simple_upload(
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 46, in wrapper
    return method(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 3610, in simple_upload
    return self.request(
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 265, in request
    raise Forbidden(resp)
tweepy.errors.Forbidden: 403 Forbidden

2. JSONDecodeError:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 540, in <module>
    main()
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 532, in main
    publisher.post_to_twitter(temp_path, description)
  File "/home/user/test.py", line 391, in post_to_twitter
    media = self.twitter_v1.media_upload(image_path)
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 3566, in media_upload
    return self.simple_upload(
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 46, in wrapper
    return method(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 3610, in simple_upload
    return self.request(
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/api.py", line 265, in request
    raise Forbidden(resp)
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/tweepy/errors.py", line 54, in __init__
    response_json = response.json()
  File "/home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/requests/models.py", line 974, in json
    return complexjson.loads(self.text, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/simplejson/__init__.py", line 525, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/simplejson/decoder.py", line 370, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/simplejson/decoder.py", line 400, in raw_decode
    return self.scan_once(s, idx=_w(s, idx).end())
simplejson.errors.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)