In addition to the "rate limit exceeded" issue Twitter users are facing today (see footnote in post below), the increasingly shithole platform also instituted a policy without advance notice yesterday that only account holders could view tweets:
If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you’ll be unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll meet a Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user.
Twitter didn’t immediately make a public announcement, making it unclear if this was an intentional update or another technical mishap. Later on Friday, however, Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted, claiming in a reply that the change is a “Temporary emergency measure,” blaming “data pillaging” for degrading the service for all users.
In a reply to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney complaining about how pay and account walls break the internet, Musk claimed, “Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience” without providing any more specifics...
Here's a specific we'll provide with some assurance: Fascist fanboy and would- be cage warrior* Elon Musk is using this tactic to harvest information and monetize it:
...Back in 2015, Twitter unveiled(opens in a new tab) in a blog post that "500 million people" visit Twitter each month without logging in. That's a lot of potential users who aren't providing their data to Twitter for the company to monetize. In fact, that number is higher than what Twitter has for monthly active users. Twitter has continually suffered from stagnant(opens in a new tab) user growth(opens in a new tab), loss of power users(opens in a new tab), and dwindling advertising revenue(opens in a new tab) since Musk took over the platform. Forcing hundreds of millions of visitors to sign up gives the company the opportunity to inflate those numbers and pitch its bigger use base to potential advertisers...
But since we're talking about the unerring alpha genius that is Musk, you know this won't be the last time he sabotages his own platform, because he has a growing track record:
...[T]his isn't the first time Twitter has made its platform less accessible since being acquired by Musk. Earlier this year, Twitter blocked third-party clients from the platform, shutting those applications down indefinitely. In April, Twitter started requiring that visitors login to an account if they wanted to use the search function on the platform. On Thursday, Mashable reported on the denigration of the Twitter API, after speaking to many developers who could no longer access certain functions of the platform and were forced to shut down their apps after years of service...
Folks, if our "Tweets of the Day" goes poof one day soon, you'll know the reason why.
*As far as that proposed "cage match" between Musk and Zuck, the prospect of seeing these two loathsome tech bros humiliating each other, not to mention breaking each others' bones and shedding blood, comes under the category of "stop threatening us with a good time."
(Photo: Someone who has far too good an opinion of himself/ Theo Wargo/ Getty)
