On 2nd July 2023, a lot of Twitter users were reporting that they could not view tweets. In search of the answer as to why this was happening, they asked each other on different platforms and came up with the conclusion that Twitter is down. Well, it was the only logical answer since it has happened several times before. Little did they know, it wasn’t the case. A few hours later, Elon Musk, the Chairman of Twitter announced the Twitter rate limit.
To put it simply, if you subscribe and become a verified account, you can read up to 6,000 posts per day. If you are unverified (read: no payment to the site), you can read 600 posts a day. And lastly, if you are new and unverified you can only read 300 posts per day.
About an hour plus later (and thousands of angry and cursed tweets by users), he then, announced that the limit had been increased to 8,000 for verified accounts, 800 for unverified accounts and 400 for new unverified users.
Now everyone was wondering why he does it. Well, according to his tweet later, he was doing it for the good of the people and the world. How noble of you, Elon.
Well, it’s a good thing that this read limit is a temporary measure to curb data scraping and system manipulation. I mean, we can’t all be touching grass every day and all the time as suggested by the previous co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey’s reaction through his Twitter account after Musk’s announcement.
This isn’t the first time Musk had announced something so shocking. Previously, he stated that accounts with those blue verified check marks would lose their verified signs if they don’t subscribe to Twitter Blue. Well, you’ve just got to fork out $8 per month only. Cheap, isn’t it? Obviously, I don’t subscribe to it.
I swear to God, the more time I spend on Twitter, the poorer I feel.
