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Twitter is dead. Long live Twitter.
When Elon Musk purchased social media giant Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022, many wondered what his plans were for the site.
Nearly a year later, we’re still unsure.
But what we do know is that Musk has had plenty of problems since purchasing the site. He’s done massive layoffs and added a Twitter Blue subscription model, among a number of other changes.
However, when the site went down for many users on Saturday morning, giving them a “Rate Limit Exceeded” error, something seemed particularly off.
Hours went by, and while some elements of functionality briefly returned, it wasn’t long before they disappeared again. Most assumed that this was a technology issue, because there was no way Musk was intentionally tanking his own site.
Elon Musk Kills Twitter With New Pay Wall
As it turns out, they were wrong.
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
“To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits: – Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day – Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day – New unverified accounts to 300/day,” Musk said in a tweet on Saturday afternoon.
Essentially, he’s introduced an additional pay wall to the social media platform for anyone who wants to continue to use it the way that they had used it prior.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter users were furious with the decision.
Musk is essentially taking a gamble. He’s betting that users are more likely to pay to remain on the site than they are to lose it. Though whether it’s a good gamble is a separate discussion.
Alternatives like BlueSky and Mastodon and no doubt some tech startup is just waiting to pick up the pieces of Twitter’s misfortune.
The social media platform that was, perhaps, one of the most important pieces of tech in the world over the last decade plus, now appears to be on the brink of extinction.
But hey, maybe Mark Zuckerberg will take care of this for us.
After all, he’s never disappointed his users before. Right?