Elon Musk said on Saturday that thousands of users who use the Elon Mask site to report widespread problems will see a temporary limit on the number of posts they can make after a few hours of data scraping by Twitter users. Many of these users have reported receiving an error message stating that they have exceeded their “rate limit,” advising them that they have violated Twitter’s rules and have downloaded and viewed several tweets.
Mr. Musk, who previously stated that “a few hundred organizations” are scraping data from Twitter, causing “real user experience impact,” did not specify how long the limit will be in effect or what it will take to lift the restriction.
Twitter Post Limit
He initially stated that verified accounts would be limited to 6,000 posts per day, verified accounts with 600 posts, and new unverified accounts with 300 posts. After nearly two hours, he increased the limits to 8,000 for verified accounts, 800 for verified accounts, and 400 for new unverified accounts – and then raised them again to 10,000, 1,000, and 500, respectively, at the start of Saturday evening.
“Due to the extensive reading of all the posts, a rate limit has been enforced,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Twitter.
He expressed concern about these organizations that scrape Twitter and use tweets for research or artificial intelligence training on subjects they dislike.
But the change on Saturday dismayed some users, who wondered why their online activities would be so severely curtailed.
The phrase “rate limit exceeded” has become a trend, with memes encouraging those affected by the new policy to report Twitter problems on the site DownDetector, which tracks error reports on multiple websites.
Other users expressed more realistic concerns, including how the daily limit would affect people’s ability to monitor severe weather on the platform, which often involves dozens of updates, alerts, and scrolling for caution.
There are several reasons to impose a limit on the number of Twitter API calls.
Here are a few factors contributing to the implementation of this policy:
Maintain server stability: Twitter receives a significant number of API calls at any given moment. Limiting the number of API calls helps ensure that servers do not become overloaded and can function smoothly, keeping up with the demand.
Prevent spam and hacking attempts: Restricting the volume of API call requests helps prevent users from sending spam through extensive tweeting. It also serves as a defense against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks orchestrated by hackers.
In summary, Twitter has implemented a limit on the number of API calls to ensure server stability, avoid spam, and protect against hacking attempts
