Elon Musk announced new “temporary” reading limits for Twitter accounts on Saturday, the latest change for the social media platform by Musk, as thousands of users were unable to access the site.
Unverified Twitter users will be temporarily restricted.
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Key Takeaways
- New, unverified Twitter accounts will be restricted to viewing 300 posts, while older unverified accounts will be limited to 600, Musk announced.
- Verified Twitter accounts will be limited to reading 6,000 posts per day.
- Musk—who noted the changes were “temporary”—said the new limits are meant to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.”
- Users who exceed their reading limit will be met with a “rate limit exceeded” message.
- The announcement followed a surge of reports by users indicating they were unable to access the site, with as many as 7,404 outage reports filed earlier on Saturday, according to DownDetector.
Key Background
The latest Twitter change follows a decision Friday restricting access to the platform for anyone not logged into an account, which Musk labeled a “temporary emergency measure.” Musk said the platform was “getting data pillaged so much” that it was affecting the platform’s availability for users. Musk, who recently stepped down as Twitter CEO to be replaced by NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino, has made several changes to Twitter since purchasing the social media site in October. He announced the site’s shift to paid verification—Twitter Blue—in December, which allows users to edit and post longer tweets.
Forbes Valuation
Musk is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $237.7 billion, according to our latest estimates.