Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk said Saturday that Twitter users will only give you the chance to read a certain variety of posts per day attributable to “extreme levels of knowledge scraping” and “system manipulation” on the platform.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who’s executive chairman and CTO of Twitter, said the bounds are temporary, but verified accounts will give you the chance to read 8,000 posts per day, unverified accounts will give you the chance to read 800 posts per day and recent unverified accounts can be limited to reading 400 posts per day.
Later within the day, Musk tweeted the bounds could be raised again, “Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k.”
Musk didn’t say exactly when those restrictions can be increased or lifted entirely. He increased the bounds twice from the previous rates he had set earlier Saturday afternoon.
Musk’s tweet comes as 1000’s of users reported problems as they tried to access Twitter Saturday, marking the most recent widespread outage since he acquired the social media site late last 12 months.
Many users who tried to access or post content on Twitter’s website or mobile app were met with a “Rate limit exceeded” or “Cannot retrieve tweets” error message. As of 11 a.m. ET, greater than 7,300 people reported issues with Twitter to the web site Downdetector.
Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment with an automatic response. It is just not immediately clear if the location’s outage is said to Twitter’s recent limited-reading policy.
The social media site also began restricting access to content that was available to users without an account on Friday. Twitter had previously allowed people to view public profiles and tweets, even in the event that they had not signed in, but they are actually immediately prompted with a log-in window.
Musk said in a tweet Friday that “drastic and immediate motion” was obligatory attributable to “EXTREME” levels of knowledge scraping. He added that the restrictions could be “unlocked shortly,” however the content remained restricted as of Saturday afternoon.
Saturday’s outage is just not the primary time Twitter has suffered technical difficulties in recent months. In February, users were unable to post on the location for about 90 minutes after receiving a message that read, “You might be over the day by day limit for sending Tweets.” In March, users were temporarily unable to click on links or load images.
Other outages coincided with reports of an information center closure and large layoffs at Twitter, which Musk claimed were obligatory for the financial health of the corporate.
CORRECTION: This text has been updated to point out that Elon Musk isn’t any longer CEO of Twitter. He’s CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
