Elon Musk Enforces Twitter ‘Rate Limit’ in Response to Severe ‘System Manipulation’

Social Media Platform Twitter Implements Daily Post Limits

Social media platform Twitter is temporarily limiting the number of posts users will be allowed to read daily after seeing “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” according to executive chairman Elon Musk.

In a July 1 post, Musk said the temporary limits would see verified accounts capped at 10,000 posts per day, while unverified and new unverified accounts are capped at 1,000 and 500 posts per day, respectively:

• Verified accounts: 10,000 posts per day
• Unverified accounts: 1,000 posts per day
• New unverified accounts: 500 posts per day

Issues Reported by Twitter Users

Twitter users have been reporting issues on the platform over the last few days, including the inability to retrieve tweets, missing timelines, and being met with a “rate limited exceeded” message, leading to the hashtags #TwitterDown and #TwitterFail to trend in certain jurisdictions.

Real-time outage monitor website Downdetector has seen thousands of user-submitted reports claiming Twitter outages over the last 24 hours.

France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the East and West Coasts of the United States appear to be the most affected regions, according to Is The Service Down.

Possible Causes of Data Scraping and System Manipulation

Musk didn’t clarify what may be responsible for scraping Twitter’s data or elaborate on the root cause behind the “system manipulation” claim, but said that its data was being “pillaged” so much it was degrading service for users.

Some suggest that the extreme “data scraping” has been caused by web-browsing-enabled artificial intelligence chatbots, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Rate Limits and Twitter’s API

According to Twitter’s developer documents, rate limits are imposed to manage the volume of requests made to Twitter’s application program interface (API).

“These limits help us provide the reliable and scalable API that our developer community relies on,” the document states.

Jack Dorsey’s Defense and Future Vision

In a July 2 tweet, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder, and former CEO of Twitter, was among the few that defended the recent moves, stating that “Running Twitter is hard” and that the decision was likely made for the greater good of the platform.

He added that he’d like to see Twitter move to a “truly censorship-resistant open protocol” like Bitcoin and Nostr.