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Elon Musk said Saturday that Twitter users can only read a certain number of posts per day due to “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” on the platform.
Twitter’s executive chairman and CTO, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said the limit was temporary, but verified accounts could see 8,000 posts per day, while unverified accounts could see 1. It said it will be able to view 800 posts per day, and new unverified accounts will be able to view 8,000 posts per day. The number of post views per day is limited to 400.
Musk did not say when the restrictions would be lifted. He raised the cap from a previous rate set early Saturday afternoon.
Musk’s tweets come amid thousands of users reporting problems when trying to access Twitter on Saturday, after Musk acquired the social media site late last year. , indicating that the most recent major failure occurred.
Many users who tried to access or post content on Twitter’s website or mobile app received a “Rate Limit Exceeded” or “Unable to Retrieve Tweets” error message.As of 11 a.m. ET, more than 7,300 people have reported issues with Twitter to the website. down detector.
Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment with an automated response. It’s unclear at this time if the site’s outage is related to Twitter’s new restricted browsing policy.
The social media site also began restricting access to content available to users without accounts on Friday. Twitter used to allow people to view public profiles and Tweets without signing in, but now the login window pops up immediately.
Musk said in a tweet On Friday, the “extreme” level of data scraping required “drastic and immediate action.” He added that the restrictions “will be lifted soon,” but content remained restricted as of Saturday afternoon.
Saturday’s outage isn’t the first time Twitter has run into technical problems in recent months. In February, users were prevented from posting to the site for about 90 minutes with a message that said, “You have exceeded your daily tweet sending limit.” In March, users were temporarily unable to click links or load images.
Other setbacks coincided with data center closures and reports of massive job cuts at Twitter, which Musk claimed were necessary for the company’s financial health.
It’s unclear when Saturday’s power outage will be lifted.
Correction: This article has been updated to indicate that Elon Musk is no longer CEO of Twitter. He is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.