Confusion at Twitter continues over Elon Musk’s tweet limits

Confusion at Twitter seems to be persevering with after proprietor Elon Musk launched limits to the quantity of posts customers can learn in a day.

The billionaire introduced the “non permanent measure” to handle excessive ranges of information scraping on the location.

Preliminary limits have been shortly elevated by Mr Musk on the weekend.

Whereas many customers reported not seeing limits on Sunday, some mentioned a “charge restrict exceeded” notification had returned on Monday.

Mr Musk – who took over Twitter in October 2022 had mentioned beforehand that he was not pleased about synthetic intelligence (AI) corporations utilizing Twitter’s information to coach their giant language fashions.

Modifications to the platform on the weekend noticed it impose an preliminary 600-tweet restrict for unverified Twitter customers who are usually not paying for a subscription to the platform, however Mr Musk mentioned this had elevated to 1,000 on Saturday night.

He has not but supplied an replace on whether or not the bounds will stay in place.

Responding to a consumer flagging points with website options, Mr Musk mentioned in a tweet on Saturday morning Twitter had imposed the measures because of “EXTREME ranges of information scraping”.

The method is a key technique of gathering content material and data from internet platforms, and includes extracting information from websites, usually at nice scale, to make it accessible and readable in native codecs, similar to in a spreadsheet.

“Virtually each firm doing AI, from start-ups to a number of the greatest firms on Earth, was scraping huge quantities of information,” Mr Musk added in his tweet.

“It’s slightly galling to need to deliver giant numbers of servers on-line on an emergency foundation simply to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation.”

Comparable issues over the mass use of platform information to coach AI fashions partly sparked Reddit’s choice to make firms pay to entry its information.

Information scientist and ex-Twitter worker, Dr Rumman Chowdhury, informed the BBC it was unclear if AI organisations had been scraping information from Twitter, however instructed monetary points might be behind the adjustments.

“Frankly, I believe I’m in a majority of people that consider that it’s as a result of his lack of fee of his payments… and he’s trying to cut back his prices,” she mentioned.

An Australian venture administration agency has filed a lawsuit towards Twitter in a US courtroom looking for cumulative funds of about A$1m (£534,000) over alleged non-payment of payments for work performed in 4 nations, courtroom filings present.

In Might, a former public relations agency filed a swimsuit in a New York courtroom saying Twitter had not paid its payments, whereas early this yr US-based advisory agency Innisfree M&A Inc sued it, looking for about $1.9m (£1.4m) for what it mentioned have been unpaid payments after it suggested Twitter on its acquisition by Mr Musk.

Since Mr Musk purchased Twitter he has centered on lowering prices by shedding half the workforce and introducing the subscription service, which provides the sought-after “verified” badge for a month-to-month price.

For a platform that requires engagement, limiting posts appears to go in the wrong way. It’s a “very excessive and unprecedented tactic” which is “already failing”, mentioned Dr Chowdhury.

Twitter noticed advertisers flee amid worries about Mr Musk’s strategy to content material moderation guidelines, affecting its income.

When Mr Musk spoke to the BBC in April, he mentioned the corporate was now “roughly breaking even”, claiming most of its advertisers have been returning.

The restrict on tweets noticed some journalists, who use Twitter to search out info for stay reporting and verification of tales, confronted with the curbs.

Bel Trew, chief worldwide correspondent for The Unbiased, tweeted that limits to what number of tweets she might learn on the platform had left her at a “full loss” whereas reporting on Sunday.

And a reporter within the US metropolis of Baltimore was left unable to view tweets from the native police division’s Twitter account within the wake of a capturing that left two folks killed and an additional 28 injured.

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These receiving “charge restrict exceeded” notifications discovered these utilized throughout all accounts – together with to accounts which tweet real-time details about emergencies, climate hazards and pure disasters.

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