Thousands of Twitter users have complained that they could not use the platform after Elon Musk introduced a strange new temporary feature on Saturday.
The social network users reported that they could not load tweets because they were informed that they had exhausted their “rate limit” or that the website “couldn’t retrieve tweets,” with many stating they could only view messages from Friday night.
However, Twitter users now know that Elon Musk has temporarily implemented a new feature that is to blame for the issue rather than a bug.
The Tesla billionaire claimed that “extreme levels of data scraping” had led to a limit on the number of postings that certain account types could view on the network, which he assumed control of in October 2022.
He posted on Twitter, saying: To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits: Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day; Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day; New unverified accounts to 300/day.”
“Your addiction is about to be broken. We will all be free. See you guys at the park,” Twitter user, @growing_daniel said.
“If you like use gate to lock twitter, I no dey pay ,” Chigozie Obi fired at Elon Musk
“These new Twitter rules will help all of us deal with our addiction to Twitter,” Twitter user, Ilemona added.
“Will advertisers on this social media platform be excited about the latest brainwave from our resident libertarian billionaire “free speech absolutist”?,” Onye Nkuzi questioned.
Uncertainty surrounds the duration of the new limits as well as the possibility of a future permanent cap.
Since taking over the platform, Musk has faced criticism before; the billionaire was previously criticized for mass employee layoffs.
Musk was also in charge of the contentious Twitter Blue feature’s introduction, which charges users for a blue tick that was previously used to identify official noteworthy accounts and enable premium features.