Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk said on Saturday that Twitter users would only give you the option to read a certain number of posts per day as a consequence of “extreme levels of data collection” and “system manipulation” on the platform.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who’s the executive chairman and CTO of Twitter, said the limits are temporary, but verified accounts will give you the option to read 8,000 posts per day, unverified accounts will give you the option to read 800 posts per day, and recent unverified accounts will be limited to reading 400 posts per day.
Later that day, Musk tweeted that the limits can be raised again: “Now to 10K, 1K. and 0.5 thousand”.
Musk didn’t say exactly when these restrictions can be increased or completely lifted. It doubled the limits from the previous rates it set earlier on Saturday afternoon.
Musk’s tweet got here as hundreds of users reported problems when attempting to access Twitter on Saturday, marking the latest widespread outage since he acquired the social networking site late last 12 months.
Many users who tried to access or post content on Twitter’s website or mobile app encountered the error message “Speed limit exceeded” or “Tweets couldn’t be downloaded.” By 11:00 ET, greater than 7,300 people had reported problems with Twitter on the website Bottom detector.
Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment with an automatic response. It isn’t immediately clear if the site’s outage is expounded to Twitter’s recent restricted reading policy.
The social networking site also began restricting access to content that was available to users without an account on Friday. Previously, Twitter allowed users to view public profiles and tweets even in the event that they weren’t logged in, but now a login window is displayed immediately.
Musk he said in a tweet On Friday, that “drastic and immediate motion” was obligatory as a consequence of the “EXTREME” levels of data collection. He added that the restrictions can be “unlocked soon” but content would remain restricted from Saturday afternoon.
Saturday’s outage isn’t the first Twitter technical outage in recent months. In February, users were unable to post to the site for about 90 minutes after receiving a message saying “You exceeded your every day tweet limit.” In March, users were temporarily unable to click links or load images.
Other outages coincided with reports of an information center closure and mass layoffs on Twitter that Musk said were obligatory for the company’s financial health.
FIX: This text has been updated to point out that Elon Musk isn’t any longer CEO of Twitter. He’s the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.