Twitter isn’t in top form, but it’s far from over. And some users got a nasty surprise this weekend when their use of the blue bird was limited.
What’s the limit?
On Saturday, Elon Musk sent the web into a frenzy with a tweet informing his users that they would now only be able to see a limited number of tweets per day. The limit was 6,000 tweets per day for verified accounts (paying accounts), 600 tweets per day for unverified accounts, 300 tweets per day for new accounts and the impossibility for users without an account to access the platform.
This announcement was widely criticized, so much so that Tesla’s CEO increased the limit to 10,000 daily tweets for verified accounts, 1,000 daily tweets for unverified accounts and 500 daily tweets for new accounts. The impossibility of viewing tweets by users without an account is maintained.
Elon Musk has not lost sight of the profitability of his investment, and is encouraging users to pay for Twitter Blue to increase the number of tweets they can view per day.
And when the limit is reached?
If you reach this limit, you won’t be able to view any more tweets, and updating your feed will be pointless. A message will appear saying: “Rate limit exceeded”.
What’s the reason for this restriction?
Elon Musk’s version:
Elon Musk justified the limit on tweets per day to avoid “extreme levels of data harvesting and system manipulation”.
Companies are said to be using Twitter to harvest data to improve their artificial intelligence. The processing of this mass data is deemed illegal by Twitter, which intends to take legal action against the organizations involved.
The other version is economic:
In a bid to cut costs, Twitter began a tug-of-war with Google, refusing to pay its invoices when the platform was due to renew a multi-year contract that expired on June 30, 2023. It’s a story that’s been much talked about, but it seems to be false. In fact, Bloomberg reports that since the beginning of June, Twitter has indeed started paying its bills again. Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino, who joined the company in June, is trying to improve relations with Google, which have deteriorated over time.
Twitter’s use of Google Cloud solutions is estimated to cost between $200 and $300 million a year, according to several US media outlets.
What about the competition?
This is good news for competitors like BlueSky and Mastodonte, who are struggling to keep up with the traffic on their websites. These sites are growing very fast, and we’re keeping an eye on Meta, which is currently developing a Twitter-like conversational social network called “Thread”, which should be released in early July.
