Elon Musk States Twitter’s Recent Login Requirement is a Short-Term Measure Against Data Scrapers
Elon Musk addressed the issue later in the day after internet users noticed that Twitter was no longer allowing non-signed-in users to view tweets on Friday afternoon. Initially, it was unclear whether this change was due to a technical error or a deliberate decision made by the company’s leadership.
Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience.
What should we do to stop that? I’m open to ideas.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2023
“Temporary emergency measure,” he claimed in a tweet. “We were robbed of so much data that it was a degrading service for ordinary users!” Musk later shared more context. “Several hundred organizations (perhaps more) scraped Twitter data extremely aggressively until it affected the actual user experience,” he said, responding to a tweet from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who complained about the game’s “increasingly broken” state. Internet. In a separate tweet spotted by Mashable, Twitter engineer Aqueel Miqdad said the company would allow logged-in access again “in the near future.”
Of course, without more information, it’s hard to say whether Twitter users will experience degraded service because Musk claims to be targeting his platform so aggressively. There isn’t a team at Twitter that hasn’t been affected by Musk’s cost cuts. In fact, the group responsible for maintaining the stability of Twitter’s servers has seen its fair share of layoffs and high-profile sources. As of June, the company also hadn’t paid for its Google Cloud contract for several months.
