Twitter says it couldn't let people know about rate limiting in advance

Twitter has been even messier than usual in recent days, in part because it limited the number of tweets users could read each day. The decision came as a surprise to many, but the company said it was unable to warn people.

“We have temporarily restricted usage so that we can detect and eliminate bots and other malicious actors that harm the platform,” a Twitter Business blog post reads. "Any notice of these actions would have allowed malicious actors to modify their behavior to evade detection."

While some were skeptical of Twitter's reasoning for the move, the company says it capped the rate limit to prevent bad actors from scavenging public data to power artificial intelligence models and to prevent them from "manipulating people and conversations on the platform". in a variety of ways." It states that rate limits are currently affecting a small percentage of users and will provide an update when these efforts are complete.

It seemed odd that Twitter would post this update on its corporate blog until the company mentioned that rate limiting had a "minimal" effect on advertising. Many have pointed out that limiting the number of tweets users can read per day will make it harder for advertisers to reach users and for Twitter to make money.

Rate throttling has largely destroyed Twitter's website and apps, including TweetDeck, an app many power users rely on. To help remedy this, the company has released "a new and improved version of TweetDeck". The company is upgrading all users to the latest version, but there was another twist in store: Twitter is making the app exclusive to verified accounts, putting a paywall on TweetDeck for the vast majority of users.