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Elon Musk mentioned Saturday that Twitter customers will solely be capable to learn a sure variety of posts per day because of “excessive ranges of knowledge scraping” and “system manipulation” on the platform.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who’s government chairman and CTO of Twitter, mentioned the boundaries are momentary, however verified accounts will be capable to learn 8,000 posts per day, unverified accounts will be capable to learn 800 posts per day and new unverified accounts shall be restricted to studying 400 posts per day.
Later within the day, Musk tweeted the boundaries can be raised once more, “Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k.”
Musk didn’t say precisely when these restrictions shall be elevated or lifted solely. He elevated the boundaries twice from the earlier charges he had set earlier Saturday afternoon.
Musk’s tweet comes as 1000’s of customers reported issues as they tried to entry Twitter Saturday, marking the most recent widespread outage since he acquired the social media website late final 12 months.
Many customers who tried to entry or publish content material on Twitter’s web site or cellular app had been met with a “Fee restrict exceeded” or “Can not retrieve tweets” error message. As of 11 a.m. ET, greater than 7,300 folks reported points with Twitter to the web site Downdetector.
Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for remark with an automatic response. It’s not instantly clear if the positioning’s outage is said to Twitter’s new limited-reading coverage.
The social media website additionally started limiting entry to content material that was obtainable to customers with out an account on Friday. Twitter had beforehand allowed folks to view public profiles and tweets, even when that they had not signed in, however they’re now instantly prompted with a log-in window.
Musk mentioned in a tweet Friday that “drastic and rapid motion” was mandatory because of “EXTREME” ranges of knowledge scraping. He added that the restrictions can be “unlocked shortly,” however the content material remained restricted as of Saturday afternoon.
Saturday’s outage is just not the primary time Twitter has suffered technical difficulties in latest months. In February, customers had been unable to publish on the positioning for about 90 minutes after receiving a message that learn, “You might be over the day by day restrict for sending Tweets.” In March, customers had been briefly unable to click on on hyperlinks or load pictures.
Different outages coincided with stories of an information heart closure and big layoffs at Twitter, which Musk claimed had been mandatory for the monetary well being of the corporate.
CORRECTION: This text has been up to date to point out that Elon Musk is not CEO of Twitter. He’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.