Elon Musk limits number of posts Twitter users can read each day

NEW DELHI,JULY 2 : Elon Musk announced new limits on the number of posts Twitter users will be able to read each day in a bid to fight “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation.”

Verified accounts are temporarily limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, Musk said, adding that the unverified accounts will be limited to 600 posts a day with new unverified accounts limited to 300.

“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,” Musk said on Twitter.

The temporary reading limitation will be increasing soon to 8,000 posts per day for verified users, 800 posts per day for unverified and 400 posts per day for new unverified users, Musk said in a separate post on Twitter without providing further details on when it would be implemented.

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Musk’s tweet came in the wake of complaints about Twitter outages by scores of users.

Many Twitter users were not happy with Musk’s announcement about limiting the number of tweets any given user can read in a day.

“I scroll through about 100 posts on my timeline per minute. If he keeps this it will literally end Twitter,” one user complained.

“It’s a social media app, selling ads based on impressions and time spent on the app, that is going to make people use the app less. Unreal,” another user pointed out.

“This is nuts,” yet another user tweeted.

“Your addiction is about to be broken. We will all be free. See you guys at the park,” one user joked.

Musk himself replied to that user, with “Touch grass again.”

On Friday, Twitter blocked people from viewing tweets and profiles on its website unless they are signed in to the social media site. Users who try to view content on the platform will be asked to sign up for an account or log into an existing account to see their favorite tweets.

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“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk said in a tweet.He added that hundreds of organisations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively”, affecting user experience.

Last month, Twitter had announced plans to focus on video, creator and commerce partnerships to revitalise the social media company’s business beyond digital advertising.

Twitter has also begun charging users to access its application programming interface (API), used by third-party apps and researchers.

The social media platform had previously taken a number of steps to win back advertisers who left Twitter under Musk’s ownership and to boost subscription revenue by making verification check marks a part of the Twitter Blue program.

Since Musk took over as CEO in October, Twitter has undergone several changes. After losing significant advertisers, the platform introduced new subscription features, such as the option to put tweets behind a paywall for followers to access by paying a monthly fee.

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In April, Twitter announced that it would stop supporting its free API, instead charging companies up to $500,000 per year for its use. Critics expressed concerns that this could hinder public safety alerts and war-crime research.

Musk recently appointed Linda Yaccarino, a former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, as the new CEO of Twitter, while Musk himself now serves as the company’s executive chair and chief technology officer.

-PTI