Uproar After Elon Musk Introduces Reading Limit For Twitter Users
The announcement soon led to 'RIP Twitter' and #Twitterdown trending on the social media site, with Musk not revealing how long the temporary reading limits would last.
Marvin Chege 
Twitter users around the world on Saturday, July 1 went up in arms following a move by American billionaire and Chief Twit, Elon Musk, to introduce reading limits for all users of the social media giant.
The app, as Musk revealed, applied temporary reading limits which vary depending on the verification status of the user, with those verified under the Twitter Blue system being the biggest beneficiaries of the latest controversial feature.
Verified users were initially revealed to be temporarily limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, compared to their unverified counterparts who were temporarily limited to 600 posts a day, 10 times less than their blue-tick counterparts.
A screenshot of an exceeded reading limit on Twitter. /WORLD OF STATISTICS
The new unverified accounts were restricted to a temporary limit of 300 a day. However, more than an hour later, Musk announced that the reading limits were revised upwards.
"Rate limits increasing soon to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified and 400 for new unverified," the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted.
Prior to the update, Musk joked "Rate limited due to reading all the posts about rate limits", though this did little to stop the uproar from Twitter users across the globe that emerged following the announcement.
The announcement soon led to 'RIP Twitter' and #Twitterdown trending on the social media site, with Musk not revealing how long the temporary reading limits would last.
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, with over 7,000 reports filed against Twitter through the Dowdetector.com website.
Users who tried accessing the app were told they would have to be logged into an account to view tweets, in what Musk called a "temporary emergency measure".
Depending on how many tweets you've viewed today - and whether or not you're verified, you might have already read Musk's announcement as well as this article shared on Viral Tea's Twitter handle.
However, if you're one of the Twitter users seeing a message stating "rate limit exceeded", you can check out this story posted across the rest of our social media platforms; Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram and our official WhatsApp group (if you are in it).
Musk said in his original tweet that the change is temporary and was put in place to "address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation." It is the latest widespread outage since he acquired the social media site late in 2022.
Many believe that the billionaire's latest controversial move could spell doom for the platform and create new troubles for some users who rely on it to earn a living through influencing gigs, with Beth Kasinga lamenting "This is bad for us influencers. What's the way forward?"
"This is tantamount to killing Twitter. If as a blue user, I’m restricted to reading 6,000 tweets daily, it means if I’m reading one tweet per sec, I’ll have to spend 16 hours to exceed my limit. So you can imagine if you’re not subscribed and you can only read 600/day. It’s bad!" Kinyan Boy weighed in.
Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, is reportedly preparing to unveil what is termed as the biggest competitor to Twitter which promises to transform how interactions happen online every day.
The Verge reported that one of Meta’s top executives showed employees a preview of the company’s upcoming Twitter competitor during a companywide meeting on Thursday, June 8.
The new under development, titled “Project 92,” which could be called "Threads" when it is publicly launched, doesn't have an official release date yet and is touted to benefit over 7 billion users who use WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram altogether.
