News Analysis
The Gist
- Twitter adds rate limits. Elon Musk announces limits on the number of tweets you can read.
- Users see big changes. Thousands of Twitter users reportedly lost access to the site the day of the announcement.
- The real reason behind the rate limits. Other issues at Twitter point to bigger problems.
Elon Musk, Tesla billionaire and owner of Twitter, recently announced a limit on the number of tweets users can view in a day.
Musk claims the move is a temporary measure due to unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media site. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” he wrote.
How Many Tweets Can You Read Per Day?
As of right now, the tweet-reading limit is:
- 10,000 tweets for users with verified accounts
- 1,000 tweets for users with unverified accounts
- 500 tweets for users with new, unverified accounts
Musk first proposed the temporary restriction on July 1, with much lower limits on tweet reading. However, after significant backlash, he raised the limits (twice) that same day until finally resting on the guidelines above.
Under these new restrictions, Twitter users will need to log in to view any post or profile. They can also get locked out of the site for a day after a long session of scrolling through posts — something thousands of people experienced the day of the announcement.
Those who saw the “Rate limit exceeded” notification promptly posted their complaints online once able to return, sparking the hashtag #TwitterDown. A few days later, Twitter users claimed the rate limit had mysteriously disappeared — and most agreed that was a good thing.
Related Article: The Slow Death of Twitter and the Birth of X Corp
Why Is Twitter Limiting Tweets?
Twitter’s data woes are no secret. Back in April, after Microsoft dropped Twitter from its advertising platform due to API pricing, Musk claimed Microsoft and its partner OpenAI used Twitter data illegally to train its generative AI models, like ChatGPT.
“They trained illegally using Twitter data,” Musk wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “Lawsuit time.” However, no official suit has yet been filed.
On July 4, Twitter released an update on its rate limits that went into further detail on the decision. “To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots from our platform,” the update said. “Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection.”
At "a high level," according to Twitter, the company is working to prevent bad actors or accounts from:
- Scraping Twitter data to build AI models
- Manipulating people and conversations on the platform
New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino — a former executive at NBC Universal — tweeted that “big moves” are necessary to strengthen the platform. “This work is meaningful and on-going,” she wrote.
Is Data Scraping the Real Reason for Twitter’s Rate Limits?
Did other companies scrape data from Twitter to use for AI training purposes? It’s possible. But there may be another source of unusual traffic at the site that’s flagging alarms.
Sheldon Chang, a full stack web developer, posted on Mastodon that a bug in Twitter’s web browser app is sending requests to Twitter in an infinite loop.
“It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself,” wrote Chang. “Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon’s latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in."
Chang shared a video of the bug in action, where a network console readout from Firefox spits out network requests at breakneck speed.
He added the caption, “Lest anyone doubt that Twitter was idiotic enough to release code that would cause a race condition and result in its own users executing a DDOS attack on it…”
It’s unclear at the moment when this bug went into production or how much it impacts the website’s traffic. However, Chang believes it likely stemmed from the July 1 decision to block unregistered users from the site and is not the cause behind the data scraping panic.
Yoel Roth, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, added on Bluesky, “For anyone keeping track, this isn’t even the first time they’ve completely broken the site by bumbling around in the rate limiter. There’s a reason the limiter was one of the most locked down internal tools."
Related Article: Twitter Blue: Is Twitter Verification Worth It for Marketers?
What Does This All Mean for Twitter Going Forward?
Twitter says the rate limit restrictions are temporary, and many users report no longer seeing the rate limit exceeded notification. However, that doesn’t mean a win for the site.
The social media platform has taken a beating in terms of revenue since Elon Musk’s takeover. Back in March, the billionaire claimed Twitter was beginning to recover after a 50% decline in ad revenue. A month later, he introduced Twitter Blue verification in an attempt to turn the numbers around.
Still, a May report revealed that the company may only be worth $15 billion overall — a step down from Musk’s $44 billion purchase price.
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And when it comes to popularity and public staying factor, timing could be a big factor right now. Meta — parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — recently released Threads, a text-based conversational app meant to rival Twitter. While the app is yet to be available in Europe, many are already eyeing it as a potential alternative.
As Musk and team implement bold measures to safeguard Twitter from data scraping, the stakes are high. The recent backlash points to a delicate balance between securing platform integrity and prioritizing user engagement. With rivals like Instagram Threads gaining traction, Twitter's survival hinges on its ability to navigate the course ahead correctly.
