Twitter’s Temporary Tweet Limits: The Great Twitter Cull of 2023
The social media landscape has been rocked with recent changes implemented by Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk. In an attempt to address data scraping and system manipulation, Twitter has introduced daily limits on the number of tweets users can read, a move that has caused a stir among its users and sparked intense debate.
Starting off on Saturday, Musk announced that verified accounts were limited to reading 6000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts were restricted to 600 and new unverified accounts had an even lower limit of 300 tweets per day. However, these limits have been fluctuating, with Musk increasing them in increments to reach a limit of 10,000 tweets for verified users, 1,000 for unverified users, and 500 for new unverified users within the same day.
The rationale behind these changes, according to Musk, was to combat extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation. However, the implementation details remained unclear, including how Twitter was calculating what counted as a “read” tweet and when these temporary limits would be lifted.
The new limits have not been well received by the Twitter community, with thousands of users reporting difficulties accessing the platform and seeing error messages such as “rate limit exceeded” and “Cannot retrieve tweets” while scrolling the site. This led to the hashtag #TwitterDown trending on the platform. The changes were also met with criticism from industry analysts who questioned the suddenness and transparency of the new rules.
These changes follow Musk’s recent decision to prevent people who are not signed into a Twitter account from viewing any tweets, another measure aimed at combating data scraping. Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October 2022, the platform has seen some significant changes, including mass layoffs, loosening of content moderation, and changes to the blue-check verification system, which have had a mixed reception.
Twitter users have voiced their frustration and concern over these sudden changes. Some have compared the current state of Twitter to a bar at closing time, flicking the lights on and off to chase the last stragglers out. Others have pointed out that while the intention to tackle data scraping and system manipulation is understandable, the current approach risks penalizing genuine users and restricting their access to information. The dissatisfaction among users has been summed up by the trending hashtag: #RIPTwitter.
The consensus among users and analysts seems to be that these changes, while aimed at addressing significant issues, might have been implemented too hastily and without adequate transparency. The current restrictions might indeed be killing the spirit of the platform, turning it from a bustling social media hub into a ghost town of limited interactions.
More updates about this situation will be shared as they become available, but until then, the Twitter community continues to navigate this new, limited landscape with a mix of humor, frustration, and hope for better solutions.
