Twitter has announced “temporary limits” on the number of tweets a user can read per day.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced the news via the platform on Saturday, revealing that verified accounts will be limited to reading 6,000 posts per day. In addition, unverified accounts and “new” unverified accounts will be limitied to 600 and 300 posts per day, respectively.
“To address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits,” Musk wrote. “Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day. Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day. New unverified accounts to 300/day.”
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
The news arrives less than 24 hours after Twitter users encountered error messages while trying to view tweets. Users reported seeing alterts that said, “rate limit exceeded” and “cannot retrieve tweets,” when attempting to access posts without logging into their account.
On Friday afternoon, Musk acknowledged the widespread occurence, as Elon hopped on the platform to reassure the Twitterverse that the issue was merely a “temporary emergency measure.”
“Temporary emergency measure,” Musk tweeted Friday in response to a user asking about the login requirement. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!”
NEWS: Twitter’s web version no longer allows users to browse without logging in. All urls redirect to the signup page.
This is believed to be a measure to make it harder for scrapers to take Twitter’s data, like ChatGPT’s web browsing plugin has been doing. pic.twitter.com/DbfuAWwS4p
— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) June 30, 2023
A few hours later, Musk shared the limits for certain accounts have increased.
Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified https://t.co/fuRcJLifTn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
