Elon Musk Implements Daily Limits on Twitter Post Viewing

via CNN

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has introduced restrictions on the number of tweets that users can view each day. He explained that these limitations are aimed at preventing unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform.

Twitter now requires users to log in to view tweets and profiles, a departure from its previous practice of allowing public access to the platform's conversations. Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion last year, has often referred to it as the world's digital town square.

As a result of the new restrictions, users may be locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. On Saturday, thousands of users complained about being unable to access the site.

In a tweet on Friday, Musk described the restrictions as a temporary measure taken due to excessive data scraping, which was degrading the service for regular users.

Musk further clarified the limits on Saturday, stating that unverified accounts would be temporarily restricted to viewing 600 posts per day, while verified accounts could scroll through up to 6,000 posts. However, following the backlash, he raised the thresholds to 800 posts for unverified accounts and 8,000 for verified accounts. Eventually, he settled on 1,000 and 10,000 tweets, respectively.

The crackdown had a widespread impact, leading to more than 7,500 users reporting issues with the social media service on Saturday, according to Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages.

Although this number is relatively small compared to Twitter's global user base of over 200 million, it was significant enough for the hashtag #TwitterDown to trend in certain regions.

The higher viewing threshold for verified accounts is part of an $8-per-month subscription service introduced by Musk earlier this year to boost Twitter's revenue. Since Musk took over the company and implemented cost-cutting measures, including layoffs of three-fourths of the workforce, Twitter's revenue has declined.

Changes allowing more controversial and offensive content on the platform have led to reduced spending by advertisers, further impacting Twitter's revenue. In an effort to regain advertisers' trust, Musk recently hired Linda Yaccarino, a longtime NBC Universal executive, as Twitter's CEO.

When the Associated Press inquired about the access problems experienced on Saturday, Twitter responded with a generic automated reply, failing to address the specific question.

Source: Associated Press (AP)