Twitter has imposed a temporary limit on the number of tweets users can read per day, according to its owner Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur announced the new restrictions in a series of tweets on Friday, July 1, 2023.
Musk said the move was necessary to prevent data scraping and system manipulation by hundreds of organizations that were using Twitter’s data to train their large language models (LLM), such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. He said these activities were degrading the service for normal users and violating Twitter’s terms of service.
The reading limits vary depending on the type of account. Verified accounts, which pay $8 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription, can read up to 6,000 tweets per day. Unverified or free accounts can read up to 600 tweets per day. New unverified accounts can read up to 300 tweets per day. The new policy also required all users to have an account and log in to view tweets, a measure that Musk called a “temporary emergency measure”.
Musk said these limits were temporary and would increase over time as Twitter improves its security and performance. He also said users who exceed their limits would see a message saying “rate limit exceeded” and would not be able to view any more tweets for the rest of the day.
Critics claim more problems
The announcement sparked a backlash from many Twitter users who criticized Musk for limiting their access to information and communication. Some users also claimed to have problems with logging in, viewing their own tweets, and sending direct messages.
Musk defended his decision by saying that Twitter was not a public utility and that users had other options to get their news and opinions. He also said that Twitter was working on developing its own large language model that would be more ethical and transparent than those of other companies.
Twitter has been undergoing major changes since Musk bought it in 2022 for $44 billion. The platform has introduced new features such as verification check marks, paid subscriptions, and tipping options to boost its revenue and attract more advertisers.
Twitter is not the only social media platform that has faced challenges from data scraping and system manipulation. Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have also been targeted by AI bots to train their large language models.
