Twitter owner Elon Musk announced Saturday that the platform will begin setting limits on how many tweets can be read per day.
Musk clarified that the limitations will be temporary and are meant “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation” on Twitter. It appears to have already gone into effect and even applies to replies to a user’s tweet.
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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
– New unverified accounts to 300/day— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
“Verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts/day. Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day. New unverified accounts to 300/day,” Musk’s tweet read. In a since-deleted tweet, Musk estimated that it would take the average user 1 hour and 9 minutes to read 600 tweets. Musk deleted the tweet because it responded to a tweet asking how long it would take to read 6,000 tweets.
Musk would increase the limit hours later, to 8,000 posts for verified accounts, 800 posts for unverified accounts, and 400 posts for new unverified accounts. Then, hours later, he would update it to 10,000 posts, 1,000, and 500, respectively.
Data scraping involved collecting information online and aggregating it into a spreadsheet separate from the original website it was gathered from. Fellow social media platform Facebook filed a lawsuit in 2020 against two companies that installed extensions that scraped names, birthdays, and other sensitive data. Facebook’s parent company Meta ultimately settled on the grounds that both companies comply with a permanent injunction that prohibits them from scraping its platform or Instagram again.
“This broke Twitter for me, making it impossible for me to engage as I have for years. I *post* from a dedicated, logged-in session because there is no alternative, but as a target of state surveillance orders, I *read* via anon sessions (nitter) on a [different Virtual Machine,]” whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted. “Now I can’t.”
This broke Twitter for me, making it impossible for me to engage as I have for years. I *post* from a dedicated, logged-in session because there is no alternative, but as a target of state surveillance orders, I *read* via anon sessions (nitter) on a diff VM. Now I can’t.… https://t.co/bPx2IrsV7i
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 1, 2023
“I couldn’t even imagine a more effective way of killing this app aside from just shutting it down outright,” streamer Charlie, otherwise known as Moist Critical, tweeted. “This is a huge step in self destruction, I can’t help but be impressed.”
I couldn’t even imagine a more effective way of killing this app aside from just shutting it down outright. This is a huge step in self destruction, I can’t help but be impressed https://t.co/E5M9bNRU7b
— Charlie (@MoistCr1TiKaL) July 1, 2023
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This comes after the platform’s Spaces feature has been used as a sort of online campaign stop, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) launched his presidential campaign via a Spaces conversation with Musk and Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was similarly interviewed by Musk.
Meanwhile, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey released an update in May on his most recent project, Nostr, saying he’s looking for “more developers who cut their teeth on this” in order to “build something that matters.”
