Why is Twitter limiting the number of tweets people can read?

Elon Musk is facing backlash after announcing a temporary limit on the number of posts Twitter users can read each day.

The tech-billionaire, who bought the social media platform in December for $44bn (£35bn), initially said unverified accounts would be limited to 600 posts per day, while newer unverified accounts would be restricted to just 300.

People with verified accounts – by paying for a Twitter Blue subscription – would get to view 6,000 posts per day, Musk added.

A few hours later, Musk said this would be raised to 10,000 for verified users and 1,000 and 500 for unverified and new unverified accounts, respectively.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the limit is a measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation".

Read more: Twitter isn't showing tweets unless you're logged in

Musk didn't elaborate on who was collecting this data, how the system was being manipulated, but he has expressed concerns about this issue in the past.

Many users found themselves locked out of Twitter on Saturday and were met with a message saying "rate limit exceeded", with #Twitterdown and #RIPTwitter trending on the site.

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The move prompting backlash from users, some of whom saw it as a tactic to gain more Twitter Blue subscribers, while others speculated it could be related to 80% of Twitter's 8,000 global staff being fired after Musk's takeover.

Here, Yahoo News explains the latest technical issue faced by Twitter since Musk bought the micro-blogging site.

What does 'rate limit exceeded' mean on Twitter?

"Rate limit exceeded" means that users will no longer be able to scroll on Twitter once their daily view-count has been reached.

This means they've viewed the maximum number of tweets for the day. This appears to have limited the number of replies someone can see under their post and effects whether they can refresh their feed.

Why has Elon Musk limited the number of tweets people can see?

While Musk didn't elaborate much on his claim of "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation", this is an issue he has previously complained about.

On Friday, just a day before announcing the view limit, he tweeted: "Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience. What should we do to stop that? I’m open to ideas."

Musk has previously referred to large amounts of potentially valuable data being scraped from his site without permission by artificial intelligence firms to train large language models used to power chatbots such as Open AI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

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In December Musk said that after he "learned" OpenAI was accessing Twitter for its "training", he decided to put its access to Twitter "on pause for now".

However two insiders told the New York Times that OpenAI was paying $2m per year to access Twitter's data and that Musk put his foot down because he didn't think it was paying enough.

Suggesting an alternative reason for Twitter's latest move, Adam Leon Smith, of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: "While data scraping may be part of the reason, there are very to be likely underlying technical problems.

“The alleged data scraping could well be caused by Twitter now charging exorbitant fees for API access, which may have led to a secondary market for tweet data.”

What backlash has Musk faced?

Smith said it is “very odd to start rate-limiting the reading of a social network”, as limiting users’ scroll time “will affect advertising revenue”.

Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst, added: “Never have I seen a social network try so hard to put people off using a platform and to completely curtail any potential future for its business.”

He said the move was "yet another crazy decision by Elon Musk in showing how to burn $44bon dollars in a year."

Other issues faced by Twitter since Musk's takeover include a chaotic spree of impersonator accounts subscribing to Twitter Blue for an air of legitimacy, and multiple site crashes.

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“I think that it’s going to punish the users it needs the most which is its power users, it’s heavy users, which is clearly a perverse way of operating, I would say,” he added.

He said “people are ready to get off this sinking ship as soon as possible because every week comes another bonkers business decision” at Twitter.

He said an even lower limit for unverified users "is going to be swallowed up in no time and it will soon become quite frustrating and annoying for its most addicted and heavy users to find that they are rate limited".

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Striking a more optimistic tone, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted: "Running Twitter is hard. I don’t wish that stress upon anyone.

"I trust that the team is doing their best under the constraints they have, which are immense. It’s easy to critique the decisions from afar…which I’m guilty of… but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will."

Whatever the case, Musk appeared unfazed by the backlash, suggesting that people could always step outside and spend time with family and friends if they've reached their daily view limit.

He tweeted: “Awake from a deep trance, step away from the phone to see your friends and family.”

What other platforms are Twitter users moving to?

As frustration mounted over the latest in a string of technical problems on Twitter, users have been talking about migrating to rival platforms.

Truth Social, a platform created by Donald Trump in October 2021, appeared to crash on Saturday, which was seemingly the result of an exodus of Twitter users.

Others have suggested moving to BlueSky, Mastodon and Tribel, although users have also complained of functionality issues with many of Twitter's rivals.