Elon Musk has said that the limits will soon to be increased to 8000 for verified users, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.- Down Detector said that more than 7,000 users reported issues with
Twitter on Saturday. - Musk says the move us aimed to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation
Elon Musk on Saturday evening took to the social media platform to announce major changes in how one consumes stuff on the platform. This was after millions of users were left in the lurch due to "extreme" backend changes at Twitter through the day. Musk has said in a tweet that he has applied temporary limits on who will read how many posts in a day, in order to prevent data scraping and system manipulation.
So, who gets to read how many tweets?
Musk's tweet says that verified accounts will be allowed to read 6,000 tweets in a day. unverified ones will be restricted to 600 while new accounts will get even half of this, i.e. 300/day.
In a late night post, India time, Musk added that this will be improved subsequently. "Rate limits soon to be 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified," he tweeted.
Earlier, the Twitter owner explained the rationale behind the move. "To address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits," he said.
His clarification came as millions of users across the globe, including in India, slammed him as micro-blogging platform suffered a major outage globally, which prevented thousands of users from accessing the social media platform.
Social media initial reaction
According to outage monitor website 'Down Detector', more than 7,000 users reported issues with Twitter. "Someone wake up Elon and tell him his $44 billion app isn't working!" a Twitter user posted.
"Me coming to twitter to see why it says 'rate limit exceeded' #TwitterDown," another user wrote
Earlier on Saturday, Twitter stopped browsing access on its web platform for people without accounts, as Musk said this drastic action was necessary due to "extreme levels of data scraping"." We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users," Musk posted.
According to Musk, 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". Reports said that like many of Twitter's recent changes, the latest move could easily backfire.
"It is understandable that Twitter wants to protects its data from being taken for free, though this move undoubtedly reduces Twitter's reach and exposure from external links/embeds, as well as raising some privacy concerns. Hopefully a better solution can be found longer term," posted @TitterDaily. With this move, Musk aims to prevent AI tools from searching Twitter.
(Text input from IANS)