Twitter Users Encounter Service Issues as Elon Musk Implements Daily Tweet Limits

On Saturday, numerous Twitter users faced difficulties accessing the platform, prompting thousands of complaints. The disruptions arose after owner Elon Musk enforced a restriction that limits most users to viewing a maximum of 600 tweets per day. Musk implemented these measures to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the site.

The consequences of this crackdown became evident early on Saturday, with over 7,500 individuals reporting problems using the popular social media service, according to Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages. While this number may seem relatively small compared to Twitter’s vast user base of over 200 million worldwide, the issue was significant enough to make the hashtag #TwitterDown trend in certain regions.

The service disruptions occurred shortly after Twitter made a change to its longstanding practice of allowing unrestricted access to tweets and profiles. Users are now required to log in to view content—a departure from the platform’s previous approach. Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion last year, often refers to the platform as the world’s digital town square.

In a tweet on Friday, Musk described the newly imposed restrictions as temporary, implemented due to excessive data pillaging that negatively affected the service for regular users. He further explained the measures in a Saturday tweet, revealing that unverified accounts would be temporarily limited to reading 600 posts per day, while verified accounts could scroll through up to 6,000 posts daily.

As a result, users may find themselves locked out of Twitter for the day after perusing several hundred tweets. Verified accounts, however, are subject to a higher threshold, as part of a subscription service priced at $8 per month. Musk introduced this service earlier in the year to bolster Twitter’s revenue, which has declined significantly since he assumed control of the company and downsized the workforce by approximately 75% to cut costs and avert bankruptcy.

One of the factors contributing to reduced advertiser spending on Twitter has been the platform’s allowance of more contentious and offensive content, which has alienated a portion of its user base. In an effort to win back advertisers, Musk recently appointed longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO.

An inquiry from Big Big News regarding Saturday’s access issues received an impersonal automated response from Twitter, failing to address the specific question.

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