Musk quickly updated the number of tweets that can be read.
Twitter owner Elon Musk on Saturday unveiled, and then quickly amended, new rules on the social media platform that set “time limits” on how many posts can be read per day.
Musk initially revealed on Saturday afternoon that verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts per day and unverified accounts are limited to 600 posts per day. New unverified accounts are limited to 300 posts per day, he said.
Within two hours of the announcement, Musk tweeted that the rate limits will be “rising soon” to 8,000 for verified accounts, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified accounts.
The changes were made to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” Musk tweeted.
Details of the changes came after many Twitter users complained of problems loading tweets on Saturday morning, including receiving error messages saying “rate limit exceeded”. The hashtag “TwitterDown” was trending on Saturday as users apparently ran into the new limits.
The Twitter logo is seen on a phone in this photo illustration in Washington, DC
Alastair Pike/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The web page downdetector.com showed an increase in users reporting problems accessing Twitter on Saturday morning, with thousands of problems reported by the afternoon.
Since acquiring Twitter in October for about $44 billion, Musk has made major changes to the company and its platform.
In an effort to significantly cut costs, the company cut roughly 75 percent of its 7,500-person workforce, raising concerns about Twitter’s ability to maintain its platform.
In April, the company began phasing out “blue checkmarks.”
Now, users who pay a monthly subscription fee and meet certain eligibility criteria can get a verification mark and is considered verified.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves a hotel in Beijing on May 31, 2023.
Tingshu Wang/Reuters, FILE
Musk announced in May that he would step down as CEO, after the billionaire entrepreneur pledged in December to step down as head of Twitter as soon as he found someone “stupid enough to take the job.”
Musk was replaced by Linda Yaccarino, formerly head of ad sales at NBCUniversal.
Musk, who runs Tesla and Space X, said at the time that he plans to move into a role as executive chairman and chief technology officer.
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
