Twitter Users Encounter Service Issues Due to Elon Musk’s Tweet Reading Limits

On Saturday, numerous individuals voiced complaints about difficulties accessing Twitter after its owner, Elon Musk, implemented a restriction on most users, allowing them to view only 600 tweets per day. Musk claimed that these limitations were imposed to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the platform.

The crackdown quickly had a widespread impact, with over 7,500 individuals, at one point, reporting problems using the social media service, according to complaints logged on Downdetector, a website that monitors online outages. Although this number is relatively small compared to Twitter’s global user base of over 200 million, the issues were significant enough for the hashtag #TwitterDown to trend in certain regions.

These service disruptions occurred a day after Twitter implemented a new requirement that users must log in to view tweets and profiles. This change marked a departure from the platform’s long-standing practice of allowing unrestricted access to public content. Elon Musk, who frequently promotes Twitter as the world’s digital town square since acquiring it for $44 billion last year, described the new restrictions as temporary, citing rampant data pillaging that had been degrading the experience for regular users.

In a Friday tweet, Musk explained that unverified accounts would be limited to reading 600 posts per day, while verified accounts would be granted the ability to scroll through up to 6,000 posts per day. Consequently, users could find themselves locked out of Twitter for the remainder of the day after reaching the tweet reading limit.

The higher threshold for verified accounts is part of an $8 per month subscription service introduced by Musk earlier this year, aimed at bolstering Twitter’s declining revenue. Since Musk’s takeover, the company has undergone significant cost-cutting measures, including laying off approximately three-fourths of its workforce to avoid bankruptcy. However, Twitter’s revenue has suffered as advertisers reduced their spending due to changes allowing more contentious and offensive content, alienating a larger portion of the platform’s user base. In an attempt to regain advertiser confidence, Musk recently hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO.

When the Associated Press inquired about the access problems experienced on Saturday, Twitter responded with an impersonal automated message, failing to address the question directly.