Elon Musk Implements Temporary Limits on Twitter as Users Face Difficulties: Here’s What We Know

In a surprising move, Twitter owner Elon Musk recently announced “temporary limits” on the number of tweets users can read, leading to reports of users experiencing difficulties accessing the platform. This announcement comes after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for a whopping $44 billion last October and his subsequent decision to take the company private.

Musk took to Twitter and stated, “To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits.” According to his tweet at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, verified accounts are now limited to reading 6,000 posts per day, while unverified accounts have a limit of 600 posts per day. Furthermore, new and unverified accounts face an even lower limit of 300 posts per day.

A couple of hours later, Musk provided an update, stating, “Rate limits increasing soon to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.” He also added a seemingly tongue-in-cheek comment about the commotion surrounding the rate limits, saying, “Rate limited due to reading all the posts about rate limits.”

The calculation method for determining a “read” tweet remains unclear, as does the duration of these temporary limits, which were still in effect by 5 p.m. ET on Saturday. Seeking clarification, USA TODAY reached out to Twitter, but only received an automated response in the form of a poop emoji, a typical occurrence from the company.

As users encountered the newly set limits, the hashtag #TwitterDown began trending on the platform. Downdetector.com displayed numerous reports of users experiencing problems accessing Twitter throughout Saturday afternoon. Many users reported encountering error messages such as “rate limit exceeded” and “Cannot retrieve tweets” while scrolling through the site.

It is worth noting that a USA TODAY journalist also experienced multiple “rate limit exceeded” errors in the Twitter app after just a few minutes of scrolling. However, it remains uncertain whether this was due to the temporary limits or another glitch within the app.

Interestingly, Musk’s decision to implement these new viewing restrictions comes shortly after his announcement of a “temporary emergency” measure to prevent non-logged-in users from viewing any tweets as a means to combat data scraping. Musk assured users that this measure would be lifted shortly.

The sudden implementation of these limits without prior warning has drawn criticism from analysts, including Wedbush Securities’ Daniel Ives. In an email exchange with USA TODAY, Ives expressed concerns about the impact on the Twitter platform, stating, “It’s changing the rules of the game with no warning and not a good look for the Twitter platform. Frustration is building among users.”

This Twitter outage is not the first disruption experienced by users since Musk took over the platform in 2022. Back in March, a significant service outage affected thousands of users, marking one of the largest outages during Musk’s tenure.

As Twitter users continue to grapple with these temporary limits, the question remains as to when they will be lifted and whether any further changes will be made to address the concerns raised by users and analysts alike.