In a surprising move, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced the implementation of daily limits on Twitter, causing widespread access issues for thousands of users, Investors King reports.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO took to the social media platform on Saturday to inform his followers of the new restrictions, which he claimed were necessary to combat “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.”
Under the new policy, verified Twitter accounts are now limited to reading a maximum of 6,000 posts per day. However, the restrictions are even more severe for unverified accounts, with their daily reading capacity dropping drastically to a mere 600 posts. New unverified users face the most stringent limitations, being allowed access to only 300 posts each day.
Musk emphasized that these restrictions are temporary and aimed at addressing the growing concerns of data scraping and system manipulation on the platform.
Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter late last year, the site has experienced several widespread outages, and this latest move seems to be an attempt to tackle these ongoing challenges.
However, the implementation of these daily limits has resulted in a wave of access problems for Twitter users. Many individuals attempting to access or post content on the Twitter website or mobile app were met with frustrating error messages, such as “Rate limit exceeded” or “Cannot retrieve tweets.” The disruption caused a surge of reports on the website Downdetector, with over 7,300 users encountering issues with Twitter as of 11 a.m. ET.
This recent outage is not the first time Twitter has faced technical difficulties in recent months. In February, users experienced a 90-minute period where they were unable to post on the site due to exceeding the daily tweet limit. Additionally, in March, users encountered temporary difficulties in clicking on links or loading images.
Coinciding with some of these outages, Twitter has also faced challenges in the form of a data center closure and significant layoffs. Elon Musk defended these measures as necessary for the financial health of the company.
Twitter users worldwide are now grappling with the consequences of these new limitations, as they adjust to the reduced capacity for reading posts and engaging with content. While Musk’s intentions to combat data scraping and system manipulation are commendable, the sudden implementation of these restrictions has caught many users off guard, causing frustration and raising questions about the future of Twitter under his ownership.
As the social media landscape continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how Twitter users will adapt to these changes and whether Elon Musk’s measures will indeed address the platform’s underlying issues.
