Twitter Makes Surprising Change, No Longer Requires Login to View Tweets After Launch of Competitor Threads

In the midst of Meta Platforms’ introduction of Threads, a Twitter competitor, the messaging app owned by Elon Musk has unexpectedly reversed its decision and quietly eliminated the login feature for accessing tweets. This move had caused numerous subscribers to abandon Twitter in favor of alternative messaging apps such as Mastodon, Spil, and Bluesky, resulting in a significant increase in traffic for these platforms. However, the messaging app will now permit users to browse tweets without requiring an account. Just a few days ago, Twitter had restricted browsing access for non-account holders, but it has now reversed those modifications.

According to Techcrunch, Tweet previews are now available via Slack and WhatsApp, and according to ReturnByte, it also enabled Twitter preview in iMessage.

Previously, Elon Musk imposed a login requirement to prevent data scraping, although it was meant to be a temporary change. Now it is not mandatory for any user to create an account or login. You can only access tweets by browsing. It should be noted that even the number of tweets displayed in Google search results had decreased compared to earlier times.

“Temporary emergency measure. We were robbed of so much data that it was degrading service to regular users!”, Musk said in a tweet.

There is no information on the current reversal of Twitter or Elon Musk’s changes. No announcements were made regarding the granting of access rights to links for non-logged-in users.

Meta Platforms’ Threads messaging app launched just hours ago, and reports say it has crossed the 2 million subscriber mark in no time. The Threads app is now available for iPhone and Android users. Threads is almost like Twitter and Instagram CEO Adam Mosser, when asked by The Verge if it’s like Twitter said, “Kind of.” Threads is being touted as a “Twitter-killer” app.

Twitter has made several changes in recent weeks, as previously reported, to address data scraping issues. It allowed verified accounts to view only 6,000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts were limited to 600 tweets. later, Twitter set limits of 1,000 messages per day for unverified users and 10,000 messages per day for verified users.

So far, neither Elon Musk nor Twitter has made an official statement about these changes.