In its latest change of rules, Twitter limits free post viewing
Twitter has set restrictions for the number of tweets that can be viewed by “unverified accounts”, who form the vast majority of account-holders. The number, as tweeted by owner Elon Musk himself, is currently 800 (up from 600 a few hours earlier), but might be revised upwards, according to another tweet. The ‘rate limits’ have, naturally, invited a lot of criticism.
As per the latest rule for Twitter, one of a series which is dramatically changing the short-messaging platform, announced by owner Elon Musk himself, one would be able to view a maximum of 800 tweets in a day, specifically, a 24-hour period.
Musk explained the new rules in a tweet on the night of July (as per IST) 1: 6,000 tweets per day for “verified accounts” (those who pay $8 per month), 600 tweets per day for “unverified accounts” and 300 tweets per day for “new unverified accounts”.
He updated the limits a few hours later (on July 2, IST) to 8,000, 800 and 400, respectively, but then, replied to his tweet with “Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k”, suggesting another upward revision may happen.
The reasons, according to Musk, are “extreme levels of data scraping” from “several hundred organizations” and “system manipulation”.
Data scraping is the pulling of information out of a website and into a spreadsheet in order to grab a great deal of information for analysis, processing, or presentation.
The billionaire has previously expressed concerns about data scraping at Twitter. Musk was briefly outraged over Microsoft “illegally” using Twitter’s data and threatened that it was “lawsuit time”.
But it is also not clear whether this new policy has anything to do with Twitter’s recent decision to stop paying Google for its cloud-based services, reported upon by the news outlet Platformer on June 11. Twitter’s contract with Google reportedly expired on June 30, a day before the latest policy was tweeted out.
Also, is there a streak of do-gooder Musk behind the latest decision? A few hours after his latest ‘rate limit’ tweet, he tweeted: “you awake from a deep trance, step away from the phone to see your friends & family,” apparently implying that seeing less tweets will pull one away from the phone/computer and induce them to spend time with friends and family.
These limits have, naturally, invited a lot of criticism, like several of Musk’s earlier decisions, including the one to introduce paid accounts (blue tick), but whether they will prompt him to do away with the limits is anybody’s guess.
