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Elon Musk mentioned Saturday that Twitter customers will solely have the ability to learn a sure variety of posts per day resulting from “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 bounds are non permanent, however verified accounts will have the ability to learn 8,000 posts per day, unverified accounts will have the ability 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 bounds can be raised once more, “Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k.”
Musk didn’t say precisely when these restrictions shall be elevated or lifted totally. He elevated the bounds twice from the earlier charges he had set earlier Saturday afternoon.
Musk’s tweet comes as hundreds of customers reported issues as they tried to entry Twitter Saturday, marking the newest widespread outage since he acquired the social media web site late final yr.
Many customers who tried to entry or submit content material on Twitter’s web site or cell 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 isn’t instantly clear if the location’s outage is expounded to Twitter’s new limited-reading coverage.
The social media web site additionally started limiting entry to content material that was out there to customers with out an account on Friday. Twitter had beforehand allowed folks to view public profiles and tweets, even when they’d not signed in, however they’re now instantly prompted with a log-in window.
Musk mentioned in a tweet Friday that “drastic and speedy motion” was essential resulting from “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 just isn’t the primary time Twitter has suffered technical difficulties in current months. In February, customers had been unable to submit on the location 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 photographs.
Different outages coincided with stories of an information middle closure and large layoffs at Twitter, which Musk claimed had been essential for the monetary well being of the corporate.
CORRECTION: This text has been up to date to indicate that Elon Musk is now not CEO of Twitter. He’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.