FILE PHOTO: Illustration shows Twitter logo

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform was instating “temporary limits” on the platform during widespread technical issues.

After many users reported error messages on the platform saying “Sorry, users are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again,” and an inability to access their accounts, or view tweets the billionaire addressed the situation and explained what was happening.
“To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits,” Musk wrote. “Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day; Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day; New unverified accounts to 300/day.”
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day

The new measures announced by Musk are the latest in his effort to prevent data scraping and platform manipulation.
He explained further that hundreds of organizations were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively” which was impacting user experience and causing technical issues across the website. The Twitter CEO explained that Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies are the ones to blame.
“Almost every company doing AI,” he said in a tweet. “From startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation.”
This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping.

Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data.

Another measure that was implemented was the requirement for those without a Twitter account to create one in order to view tweets on the platform.
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk explained.
However, Musk said that some of the measure, such as the requirement to have a Twitter account in order to view tweets, were only temporary.