Elon Musk causes chaos with new Twitter rate limit, leaving thousands ‘locked out’ on their accounts

Elon Musk has sparked outrage over new restrictions for all Twitter users, with thousands complaining of being “locked out”.

Elon Musk has announced new restrictions for Twitter users, with thousands complaining of being “locked out” after the new rate limit.

The billionaire, who took over Twitter in October 2022 after buying it for about $68 billion, revealed on Sunday he would temporarily limit the number of tweets people could read in a day.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk sparked fury after announcing users will only be able to see a limited number of tweets per day. Picture: Alain Jocard / AFP.

Mr Musk said verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts a day, and unverified accounts can only read 600 posts a day.

Furthermore, new unverified accounts are limited to 300 posts per day

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation” by third-party platforms.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Musk has previously expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for using the platform’s data to train their large language models.

He did not indicate how long the limits would be in place.

Many logging onto Twitter after the changes were introduced were met with a message that read “Rate limit exceeded”.

#Twitterdown, RIP Twitter and Goodbye Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with the message.

The change prevented them from seeing new tweets in their feeds, sending out their own tweets, and even sending a direct message.

Twitter users have reported issues with the site after Musk announced the change. Picture: Samantha Laurey / AFP.

In Australia, a peak of 467 people reported issues with the site just after 12am AEST on Sunday, with hundreds more complaints being filed through the morning according to the website Downdetector, which tracks online outages.

Meanwhile, in the UK, 5126 people complained of problems accessing the site at 4.12pm (1.12am AEST) on Saturday. And in the US in the US, 7461 people complained of issues at about 1.15am AEST, the site notes.

In response to Mr Musk’s tweet limiting decision, one user satirically said users are now “free” from the addictive app, adding: “See you guys at the park.”

But the billionaire quipped that people will now be able to “touch grass again” in response to the tweet rate limit.

Touch grass again

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Elon Musk really went from the man who’s going to take us to mars and save the planet to the guy who can’t keep a website running

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) July 2, 2023

refreshing the tl every 5 seconds and getting rate limit exceeded pic.twitter.com/C9VvoZxM1P

— Ù‹ (@paddysroyco) July 2, 2023

me after the 600th tweet #ratelimitexceededpic.twitter.com/fdNAaHDvbX

— Chang Le (@seewhatsee_) July 1, 2023

The unverified people are the ones making twitter engaging and fun. Leave your penthouse and come to the street to see who your actual users are.

— Name cannot be blank (@hackSultan) July 1, 2023

Every day, Elon Musk gets up at 5:30 am, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and touches this poster on the wall. He does it for you, and he does it for me. pic.twitter.com/xFqb91rprV

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) July 2, 2023

In the wake of the backlash, Mr Musk has twice tweeted the rate limit would increase. First he wrote that verified users would “soon” be able to see 8000 tweets, unverified users would see 800, and new unverified users, 400.

In a second update, Musk wrote the rate limits were “now to 10k, 1k, and 0.5k”, respectively.

Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

However, despite the ongoing disruption to usual services, things are now on the up compared to earlier figures.

It’s the latest change to the social media platform after Mr Musk faced backlash when he introduced fees for blue ticks in April.

Those who wanted to continue to have an iconic tick would need to fork out up to $19 per month for a Twitter Blue account.

This premium service not only features that tick but users also get other functionality including being able to edit tweets and post longer messages.

Musk also caused controversy for his actions after he initially took over Twitter.

The billionaire immediately slashed hundreds of jobs in a bid to save the company from bankruptcy and fired senior leaders, including former CEO Parag Agrawal.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced with permission