Twitter users report issue with website, ‘TwitterDown’ and ‘Rate Limit Exceeded’ starts trending

Numerous Twitter users expressed frustration on Saturday as they experienced difficulties accessing the social media platform, leading to the trending hashtags "TwitterDown" and "RateLimitExceeded."

The disruption started around 8 a.m. EST on Saturday and persisted throughout the afternoon, as reported by DownDetector. By 1 p.m., there were already more than 7,000 reports of service outages related to the website. A few users reported encountering problems such as difficulties in accessing tweets or receiving the error message, "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again."

In a tweet posted at approximately 1 pm, Elon Musk, who assumed control of the San Francisco-based platform in 2022, addressed the issue of post-reading limits. He mentioned that these limits were implemented temporarily as a measure against excessive data scraping and system manipulation. According to Musk's tweet, verified accounts were restricted to reading 6000 posts per day, unverified accounts to 600 posts per day, and new unverified accounts to 300 posts per day.


Several Twitter users reached out directly to Musk, expressing their concerns and questions about the situation. Some messages included phrases like, "Hey Elon, my Twitter isn't working," and "A limit on reading tweets?"


In response to aggressive data scraping by numerous organizations, Twitter recently announced a temporary emergency measure that requires users to have an account on the platform to view tweets. Elon Musk, the owner of the platform, expressed concerns about the excessive scraping, which was negatively impacting the user experience.

Prior to this, Musk had voiced his dissatisfaction with artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI (the owner of ChatGPT), for utilizing Twitter's data to train their large language models. To regain the trust of advertisers who had left the platform during Musk's ownership and to enhance subscription revenue, Twitter implemented measures such as incorporating verification checkmarks into the Twitter Blue program.

FAQs:

1. What changes has Elon Musk introduced?
   In a tweet posted at approximately 1 pm, Elon Musk, who assumed control of the San Francisco-based platform in 2022, addressed the issue of post-reading limits. He mentioned that these limits were implemented temporarily as a measure against excessive data scraping and system manipulation. According to Musk's tweet, verified accounts were restricted to reading 6000 posts per day, unverified accounts to 600 posts per day, and new unverified accounts to 300 posts per day.
2. When did Twitter report issues with users?
   The disruption started around 8 a.m. EST on Saturday and persisted throughout the afternoon, as reported by DownDetector. By 1 p.m., there were already more than 7,000 reports of service outages related to the website. A few users reported encountering problems such as difficulties in accessing tweets or receiving the error message, "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again."