Sarah Travers
Perplexity at Twitter seems to persist in the aftermath of owner Elon Musk’s enactment of daily tweet-viewing constraints for users.
The tycoon publicized this “interim solution” as an attempt to curb rampant data scraping on the platform.
Over the weekend, Mr. Musk promptly elevated these initial constraints.
While a multitude of users claimed that by Sunday, these restrictions were no longer evident, a few noted that a “rate limit exceeded” notification reemerged by Monday.
Mr. Musk, who assumed control of Twitter in October 2022, had formerly expressed his dissatisfaction towards AI companies leveraging Twitter data to educate their expansive language models.
Over the weekend, the platform underwent alterations, introducing a preliminary 600-tweet limit for non-verified Twitter users who haven’t subscribed to a premium service. However, according to Mr. Musk, this was escalated to 1,000 by Saturday night.
An official statement concerning the future permanence of these restrictions is yet to be made by him.
An AI Dilemma?
Mr. Musk, in response to a user pointing out issues with the platform’s features on Saturday morning, indicated via a tweet that these measures were induced due to “EXTREME levels of data scraping.”
This method is integral for collecting content and information from online platforms. It includes mining data from websites, typically on a large scale, and converting it into locally accessible and readable formats, like spreadsheets.
“Nearly every AI-related entity, ranging from start-ups to some of the largest corporations worldwide, was extracting enormous volumes of data,” Mr. Musk elaborated in his tweet.
He expressed his annoyance at having to urgently bring numerous servers online just to accommodate an AI start-up’s inflated valuation.
Similar apprehensions about the bulk utilization of platform data to train AI models partially triggered Reddit’s choice to charge companies for data access.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist and former Twitter employee, informed the BBC that it wasn’t certain if AI corporations had been extracting data from Twitter. She suggested that financial complications could be the reason behind these transformations.
“Frankly, I am among the majority who believe that it’s attributed to his failure to settle his bills… and he’s trying to cut down his expenses,” she commented.
A project management company based in Australia has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in a US court, demanding accumulated payments around A$1m (£534,000) concerning alleged non-payment for services rendered in four countries, as per court documents.
In May, a previous public relations firm filed a lawsuit in a New York court alleging Twitter’s failure to settle its accounts. Earlier this year, US-based advisory firm Innisfree M&A Inc sued Twitter, claiming about $1.9m (£1.4m) for supposedly unpaid invoices following its consultancy for Twitter’s acquisition by Mr. Musk.
Upon his acquisition of Twitter, Mr. Musk has concentrated on cost reduction by downsizing half of the workforce and initiating a subscription service that offers the coveted “verified” badge for a monthly charge.
For a platform that thrives on interaction, limiting posts seems counterproductive. It’s a “highly severe and unprecedented strategy” which is “already backfiring”, stated Dr. Chowdhury.
Advertisers began to withdraw from Twitter due to apprehensions about Mr. Musk’s approach to content moderation policies, impacting its revenue.
In a conversation with the BBC in April, Mr. Musk claimed the company was now “approximately breaking even”, asserting the return of most of its advertisers.
Ground-level Impact
The tweet limit resulted in some journalists, who utilize Twitter for live reporting and story verification, facing these restrictions.
Bel Trew, the main international correspondent for The Independent, expressed on Twitter that
the limitations on the number of tweets she could view left her at a “complete loss” while reporting on Sunday.
A reporter from Baltimore, USA, was unable to access tweets from the local police department following a shooting incident that resulted in two fatalities and 28 injuries.
Users who received “rate limit exceeded” notifications discovered that these applied universally – even to accounts that deliver real-time updates about emergencies, weather threats, and natural disasters.
The BBC contacted Twitter for clarification and received an automated response featuring a poo emoji.
Elon Musk’s tweet restrictions on Twitter have drawn considerable criticism and stirred up confusion among the platform’s users. As this wave of confusion continues, whether these measures will be sustained or adjusted in response to the backlash remains to be seen. Furthermore, how these restrictions will affect Twitter’s business operations, especially its relationship with advertisers and subscription users, is something to watch closely.
