Becca Monaghan
Jul 03, 2023
content.jwplatform.com
As per Elon Musk's latest announcement, Twitter has started limiting the number of tweets a person can read.
The tech mogul, who took over the platform in October in a $44 billion (£35 billion) sale, revealed on Sunday (2 July) that verified accounts can read up to 6,000 posts a day. Meanwhile, unverified users are limited to 600 a day, with newer Twitter accounts restricted to reading 300.
"Rate limits increasing soon to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified," he added later.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the "temporary limit" to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation."
The decision sparked a furious backlash from many users, with one writing: "Sooo what’s everyone’s Instagram? Where we movin’ to cause this Twitter limit is dumb AF."
Another added: "Seriously fed up with twitter now. This ‘rate limit’ thing is ridiculous. You can’t read a thread or see replies. What is the point? Why is Elon doing this… and why didn’t he warn people weeks ago if he was going to change rules?"
Musk did not say when the limits will increase, or how long the restrictions will be in place for.
Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter
Inevitably, many more Twitter users hit back at the move in the most Twitter way possible: Memes.
To add salt to the wound, thousands of people complained of problems accessing the site on Saturday (1 July).
#Twitterdown and RIP Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying "Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again."
Last week, people trying to access Twitter were told they would need to log in to an account to view tweets, in what Musk called a "temporary emergency measure."
It comes after another outage in February, when many users were not able to tweet, follow accounts or access their direct messages as the platform was plagued by widespread technical problems.
Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
Top 100
The Conversation (0)