Last Saturday, thousands of Twitter users complained of not being able to read tweets and replies. Initially, it was suspected that the platform was down. However, there was a prompt that reads “rate limit exceeded.” Consecutively, Elon Musk, former CEO of Twitter and now CTO, announced that the platform’s limiting the number of tweets a user can read in a day.
The limitation is due to “system manipulation”
According to Musk, verified accounts are limited to 6,000 tweets a day, unverified accounts are limited to 600 tweets, and new unverified accounts are limited to 300 tweets. This limitation, according to Musk, is only temporary and is due to the platform’s “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation”.
He quoted his initial tweet and said the limitation is increasing to 8,000 tweets a day for verified users, 800 for unverified users and 400 for new unverified accounts. But these numbers were changed again, and the limits are now 10K for those verified, 1K for unverified users and 0.5K for new unverified accounts.
This isn’t the first time Twitter enacted a daily limit. Last February, users reported they could not post tweets for more than an hour because of reaching the daily limit. Users were also not able to view some links and images back in March.
You now have to sign in to view tweets
Additionally, Twitter’s content is not accessible to those with no accounts. You can’t load the website or app without signing in first. Previously, you could view profiles and tweets without needing to sign in.
Since Musk acquired Twitter last year, there have been a lot of changes to the platform, including the controversial paid verified blue checks. More than 5,000 employees were also laid off and a number of advertisers left the app.