This weekend, thousands of Twitter users were met with a panic-inducing message: “Rate limit exceeded.” The error means the user’s account has reached its limits for reading tweets on the platform. Twitter has imposed temporary limits to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” CEO and owner Elon Musk explained in a tweet Saturday. He says he has since increased the limits twice, with verified accounts now able to read 6,000 tweets daily, while unverified and new accounts can see 600.
It’s unclear what exactly Twitter’s rate limits mean, but once a user reaches the limit, no new tweets will appear on their home feed or curated “For You” page. Some people say that reaching their limits has helped them realize that they spend too much time on the app and have since tried to cut back. Others have even said that they think the limit is the best thing ever happening to them because it has allowed them to focus more on real-life work.
But Twitter’s decision to limit tweets isn’t without backlash and could undermine the company’s efforts to attract advertisers. Some businesses have already started to slash their ad budgets on the platform, leading to a slowdown in revenue growth for the site. And some users have complained that Twitter’s move to restrict tweeting is a sign of a more aggressive strategy by the company to make money off the site.
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The Twitter rate limit is a way for the company to keep its servers from becoming overloaded, and it’s not uncommon for third-party apps to hit that limit, as they require Twitter to communicate with them through API calls. But things that don’t require third-party apps to use the Twitter API, such as writing tweets and sending direct messages, do not count toward a user’s API call limit, Insider Paper reports.
In a blog post Monday, Twitter explains that the new limits have been established to address “excessive data scraping and other forms of abuse” that it has found on its site. The new limits will last until the end of August when they will be reviewed again.
The Twitter rate limit had come under scrutiny in the past, including when it was used to send out fake political attacks during the 2016 presidential election. But the site says it has since vastly improved its policies around spam and harassment. In the future, it will focus on reducing abusive behavior that violates its terms of service and “threatens the integrity and safety of Twitter.” That includes preventing the use of automated bots to harass or attack other users and requiring verification for some types of content, such as links or photos. The company also plans to make it easier for users to report violations to its team. It will be the latest in a series of changes to the site, which was last year acquired by Musk for $44 billion.
