#TwitterDown, “Cannot load tweets at this time” and “rate limit exceeded” are the trending topics on Twitter on Saturday as many users across regions where the app is used encounter difficulties using the app.
In the midst of the confusion and frustration of users, billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk announced a new policy of “temporary limits” being applied on the platform to mitigate problems of “data scraping ” and “system manipulation.”
He tweeted; “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
Musk’s tweet came hours after users had been reporting difficulties in loading their feeds.
Attempts were greeted with error message “Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again.”
Some users reported errors that read, “Cannot retrieve Tweets at this time. Please try again later.”
It is unclear if this is another glitch or an intended effect of the policy announced in Musk’s tweet.
The restrictions are reported to have started way earlier before the announcement though. Reports point out that as at yesterday, anyone who is not logged into any was denied access to the platform.
According to CNN reports, 44% problems were reported on the website and 39% on the app on Saturday.
Another tweet from Elon Musk followed later notifying users that he will increase the limit soon to 8000 posts per day for verified users, 800 per day foe unverified users and 400 per day for new unverified users.
In a recent slew of Tweets, users of the app allege that Musk’s intention is to force many users of the app to pay for verifications as quickly as possible in order for him to settle a debt. According to a Platformer report, Twitter is refusing to pay a Google cloud bill valued at $1billion. The report claims that Twitter signed a 5year contract with Google in 2018 and $300m of the bill was due on Friday June 30 2023.
Platformer claims that Twitter has been ‘scrambling’ to move services off Google Cloud before the June 30 deadline.
While glitches, outages and policy changes are no longer new to Twitter users since the platform was acquired by Elon Musk, his reported inability to pay the money may see some Twitter services heavily affected. This also seems to be bad timing as social media giant Meta is reportedly preparing to launch its own Twitter rival.