Elon Musk Implements Restrictions on Twitter Usage
Elon Musk has made an announcement regarding changes in the way users access content on the platform. Musk shared the news on Saturday evening through a social media platform, stating that there will be temporary restrictions on the number of posts users can read in a day. The objective behind this move is to prevent data scraping and manipulation of the system.
Under the new restrictions, verified accounts can read up to 6,000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts will be limited to 600 tweets. New accounts are subject to even tighter limits, with a daily limit of 300 tweets. Also, if someone wants to see a tweet, they have to log in. Musk, in turn, promised that these limits will be gradually increased to 8,000 for verified accounts, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified accounts.
Musk’s decision came in response to rampant data scraping and system manipulation seen on the platform.
In particular, on the same day, this attention was stolen by a Twitter outage that caused many users to cover Musk. The outage affected tens of thousands of users. Many did not get to use Twitter.
Outage monitoring website Down Detector reported more than 7,000 complaints about Twitter outages, with some users jokingly urging Elon Musk to fix his “$44 billion app.” Others humorously expressed their frustration with error messages such as “speed limit exceeded”.
Earlier in the day, Twitter had taken a drastic step to restrict users from browsing without an account. Musk explained that this measure was necessary due to excessive data scraping, which significantly degraded the platform’s service to ordinary users. He expressed his displeasure with having to deploy multiple servers in an emergency to meet the needs of certain AI companies whose valuations are too high.
While Twitter’s decision to protect its data from free access was understandable, critics argued that the move could have potential downsides. They raised concerns about the reduced reach and visibility of external links/embedding and the impact on privacy. Users hoped that a better long-term solution could be developed to solve these problems without compromising the user experience.
Why Musk did it
One of Musk’s primary goals with the new message count limits is to prevent AI tools from exploiting the platform. By setting these restrictions, he aims to secure Twitter’s data while ensuring a fair and equitable experience for all users.
