Twitter users will face new limitations on the number of tweets they can view per day, according to a tweet from the company’s billionaire owner Elon Musk on Saturday.
“To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits,” Musk tweeted, before announcing that verified accounts would be limited to reading 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts to 600 posts per day and new unverified accounts to 300 posts per day.
Before Musk unveiled Twitter’s new policy, users were met with a message reading “rate limit exceeded,” when trying to view content. Enough users were confused by the alert that “#TwitterDown” was trending in the U.S. on Saturday morning.
The announcement is the latest in a series of major changes for the social media company, including the appointment of a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who took over the role from Musk in June. Upon her appointment, Musk tweeted that Yaccarino would “focus primarily on business operations,” while he would stay focused on “product design & technology.”
Musk also made waves last week as he appeared to agree to a fight against Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Musk on Friday tweeted “some chance fight happens in Colosseum,” after reports that Italy’s minister of culture reached out to the two tech giants offering to coordinate the fight at the historical site.
Less than two hours after his initial tweet outlining the new rate limit policy and after much online outcry, Musk quote-tweeted his original announcement saying, “Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.” He provided no timeframe or explanation for the adjustment.