Musk says Twitter is limiting the number of posts users can read
Saturday's change came as thousands of users complained they received an error message saying they had "exceeded their "rate limit".
< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Elon Musk said Saturday that Twitter would temporarily limit the number of messages users can read per day to address concerns about scraping data, just hours after thousands of users reported widespread problems using the site.< /p>Many of these users reported that they received an error message that they had "exceeded" their "rate limit", suggesting that they had broken Twitter's rules and had also downloaded and viewed many tweets.
Mr. Musk, who said Friday that "several hundred organizations" take data from Twitter in a process called scraping and that "it affects the actual user experience," did not say how long the limits would last or what might prompt him to lift the restriction.
He originally said verified accounts would be limited to reading 6,000 messages per day, unverified accounts 600 posts and new unverified accounts to 300 posts.
About two hours later, he raised those limits to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified, and 400 for new unverified, before raising them again early Saturday night to 10,000, 1,000, and 500.
"Limited rate due to reading all messages about rate limits," Musk said on Twitter.
The Billionaire expressed his dislike for organizations that scrape Twitter and use tweets to research or to train artificial intelligence programs.
But Saturday's change has caused frustration on the platform among some users, with many wondering why their online activity would be so drastically reduced.
The phrase "rate limit exceeded" is trending on Twitter, spurring memes on the site about people who have been bothered by the new policy. Downdetector, a website that tracks crash reports on multiple websites, showed that user reports of Twitter issues increased on Saturday.
D' Other users had more pragmatic concerns, including how daily limits might affect how people monitor severe weather on the platform, which often involves scrolling through dozens of updates, alerts and warnings. fire,” Alabama meteorologist James Spann posted on Twitter. "Unless something changes, this platform is now pretty much useless for those of us in the weather business." emoji.
Since Mr. Musk's takeover in October and his move to eliminate more than 75% of the company's workforce, Twitter has been become less stable, with features or the whole site sometimes crashing without explanation.
On Saturday, company engineers rushed to diagnose the problem in Slack's private channels, according to two employees. These people said that Twitter salespeople asked what they should tell their advertising clients when they realized that certain ads weren't running on the social network.
Twitter's U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 through the first week of May was $88 million, down 59% from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times.
The company has consistently fallen short of its weekly U.S. sales forecast, sometimes by as much as 30%, according to the document .
The fren...
Saturday's change came as thousands of users complained they received an error message saying they had "exceeded their "rate limit".
< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Elon Musk said Saturday that Twitter would temporarily limit the number of messages users can read per day to address concerns about scraping data, just hours after thousands of users reported widespread problems using the site.< /p>Many of these users reported that they received an error message that they had "exceeded" their "rate limit", suggesting that they had broken Twitter's rules and had also downloaded and viewed many tweets.
Mr. Musk, who said Friday that "several hundred organizations" take data from Twitter in a process called scraping and that "it affects the actual user experience," did not say how long the limits would last or what might prompt him to lift the restriction.
He originally said verified accounts would be limited to reading 6,000 messages per day, unverified accounts 600 posts and new unverified accounts to 300 posts.
About two hours later, he raised those limits to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified, and 400 for new unverified, before raising them again early Saturday night to 10,000, 1,000, and 500.
"Limited rate due to reading all messages about rate limits," Musk said on Twitter.
The Billionaire expressed his dislike for organizations that scrape Twitter and use tweets to research or to train artificial intelligence programs.
But Saturday's change has caused frustration on the platform among some users, with many wondering why their online activity would be so drastically reduced.
The phrase "rate limit exceeded" is trending on Twitter, spurring memes on the site about people who have been bothered by the new policy. Downdetector, a website that tracks crash reports on multiple websites, showed that user reports of Twitter issues increased on Saturday.
D' Other users had more pragmatic concerns, including how daily limits might affect how people monitor severe weather on the platform, which often involves scrolling through dozens of updates, alerts and warnings. fire,” Alabama meteorologist James Spann posted on Twitter. "Unless something changes, this platform is now pretty much useless for those of us in the weather business." emoji.
Since Mr. Musk's takeover in October and his move to eliminate more than 75% of the company's workforce, Twitter has been become less stable, with features or the whole site sometimes crashing without explanation.
On Saturday, company engineers rushed to diagnose the problem in Slack's private channels, according to two employees. These people said that Twitter salespeople asked what they should tell their advertising clients when they realized that certain ads weren't running on the social network.
Twitter's U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 through the first week of May was $88 million, down 59% from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times.
The company has consistently fallen short of its weekly U.S. sales forecast, sometimes by as much as 30%, according to the document .
The fren...
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