Threads Launches Twitter-Style Platform with Post Limit Restrictions, Elon Musk Responds
Elon Musk, the executive chair and CTO of Twitter, recently announced via a tweet on July 1 that the microblogging platform will be implementing temporary rate limits on users. This decision was made to address issues of excessive data scraping and system manipulation. However, this move was met with significant backlash from users, leading many to switch to alternative platforms like Mastodon and BlueSky, resulting in a surge of new users for these competitors. Interestingly, less than a month later, Instagram’s Twitter-rival Threads has also been compelled to enforce rate limits in order to combat spam attacks. Elon Musk responded to this development in a humorous manner.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in Threads: “Spam attacks are on the rise, so we need to tighten things like speed limits, which means unintentionally throttling active people (false positives). If you run into these protections, let us know.”
Unlike Musk, Mosseri did not explain the details of the percentage limits, such as the maximum number of posts that can be viewed, whether the reset occurs daily, hourly, or even weekly, and whether Meta Verified users receive a higher view limit than those without it. However, it can be said that like Twitter, Threads’ speed limit is also expected to be a temporary measure.
Elon Musk responds to Threads’ speed limit
Twitter owner reacts to Threads price cap announcement. After responding to the screenshot of the announcement, Musk tweeted “Lmaooo Copy 🐈 (cat emoji)”. Clearly, Threads was invited to emulate Twitter’s strategy.
For those who aren’t aware of the whole Threads vs. Twitter rivalry, Musk regularly looks to Threads for allegedly copying Twitter in almost every aspect. Threads has added a huge amount of Twitter features to its platform.
At the time when Twitter had to implement speed throttling, Musk faced a lot of criticism for his drastic measures to deal with data scraping issues. It remains to be seen whether Mosseri or Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will get a similar response.
Why does Threads implement rate limiting?
It is understood that Threads is suffering from a massive spam bot attack, with bots posting promotional and annoying replies to threads and standalone posts. Many users have also complained about the high number of spam messages on the platform recently.
Even in the post where Mosseri announced the price cap, one user said: “Thanks. I seem to waste half my time blocking bots running gambling and crypto sites.”
Another user expressed his frustration and said: “Are these bots confused so early with no API available? I got to w/e where half of my messages were getting a bot response. Either gambling related or obvious ‘bait’ messages.”
It is worth noting that a few hours ago Zuckerberg also posted on Threads and stated that the plan for the rest of the year is to work on the basics and assure people that this is a playbook that Meta has published many times on Facebook, Instagram, Stories and Reels, and the company trusts it, that building the platform from here.
