this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Mildly Infuriating

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[–] [email protected] 429 points 2 years ago (22 children)

This is Musk’s “Reichstag Fire” moment for Twitter.

The rate limiting is not because of “extreme manipulation”, but because of piss-poor code that Twitter deployed as part of their change to only allow tweets to be viewed if logged in. Twitter is effectively DDoSing itself right now. But, it creates an opportunity for Musk to create a narrative.

These “temporary” limits will probably remain inevitably, as they provide another benefit to Twitter - they drive Blue subscriptions. Unfortunately, they also repel free users from using the platform entirely, and at a much higher ratio.

Twitter is going to become even more of a cesspool than it already is at an alarming rate. Crazy how many established social media platforms have decided to crumble at the exact same time.

[–] Korne127 290 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Oh my god, this is just too funny.

[–] partial_accumen 73 points 2 years ago

"The DDOS is coming from INSIDE the HOUSE!"

[–] lunarmedic 50 points 2 years ago (5 children)

My lord. And they can't/won't piece 1+1 together? Hanlon's razor dictates they are indeed idiots.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 years ago

In order to quickly fix it they would probably have to roll back the change to require login to view tweets, which would be admitting that it wasn’t caused by “attacks” on Twitter, which Elon won’t do. Rock and a hard place.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago

My guess is that they are severely understaffed. Happens when the new boss is a noob in the industry and fires the people he needs...

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[–] coldv 153 points 2 years ago (26 children)

I find it especially bizarre that spez took inspiration and guidance from Musk. I can entertain the possibility of Musk intentionally driving Twitter to the ground (though he sure is taking the scenic route), but Reddit? It just seems like the rich tech bros have collectively lost their minds

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[–] notExactlyI20 74 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Yo for real, what's up with all these social media sites literally shooting themselves in the foot as we speak?.

Youtube planning to antagonize adblock users and limiting video watching, Reddit killing itself with ~~bureocracy~~ style and now Twitter doing this shit. Hopefully shit sites like TikTok or Facebook jump on the wagon too.

[–] ashok36 46 points 2 years ago (8 children)

For reddit at least, The money from VCs dried up. They have to monetise fast or go broke.

Elon way way way overplayed for Twitter and the company is hemorrhaging money paying the loans he took out to pay for the purchase.

Google in general is in decline. Ad sales are down as the net becomes SEO'd to death. Marketing teams just aren't willing to pay for Google ads like they used to since the roi isn't there anymore.

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[–] simplecyphers 59 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

There are several negatives to the limitation too. Advertisers (which are already leaving in droves) are even further discouraged from placing ads that have a much smaller chance of being seen.

Edit: spelling

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It goes deeper than that.

This all started with the API changes. Before they were charging a fair price for the API and companies happily paid it for the convenience. Then Elon got greedy he started charging a ridiculous amount for the API so those companies decided it would be worth it to just deal with the annoyance and switch to scraping the website instead. But when you hit the website it's way less efficient than hitting the API because it's doing a bunch of mixing and ranking which is a lot more complicated and costly than serving static content, which costs a small fraction of real time algorithmic ranking. So now instead of making money off companies that want their data they're losing money on the cloud costs to serve the scrapers.

More recently, they haven't been paying their hosting bills to Google and their service was set to expire at the end of last month. What just happened at the start of this month? They added the limitations. That can't be a coincidence. Now the Google services weren't hosting the site itself, otherwise they'd probably be fully down right now, but it was hosting their trust and safety services for things like fighting spam. That could have also been hosting anti scraper services as well. Since they're so under staffed they probably couldn't swap the services in time, so instead of having anti scraping services like every other big company on the internet, they decided to cut service instead. It's just built up incompetence coming to a head.

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[–] ArgonautVehicle 170 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Elon Musk, the latest billionaire owner of the online screaming match known as Twitter, sat slumped at his desk, staring at a wall of monitors blinking with a technicolor smorgasbord of error messages. The reason? He'd just let Twitter's hosting contract with Google lapse because he thought it'd be fun to see if he could migrate it somewhere else. The results? Not so fun.

A comment on Reddit had caught his eye, and he couldn't shake it. "Every now and then Elon must have a moment of clarity. Where it occurs to him 'Maybe I am just stupid?' But then he violently buries the thought."

"Stupid?" he scoffed aloud to his empty office, sending a mini landslide of Mars Rover prototypes tumbling off his desk. "I'm a genius."

He remembered how smart he'd felt when he decided to axe the account verification system, only to reinstate it after a week of high-profile mix-ups that included the Dalai Lama being mistaken for a llama enthusiast.

And the content moderation! Who needs it? Well, as it turned out, everyone. Without it, Twitter had turned into a feral wilderness of conspiracy theories, insult slinging, and more unsolicited pictures of eggplants than a greengrocer's catalog.

And then there was Kanye. "Free Kanye!" he'd declared one afternoon after one too many rocket fuel coffees. But after the notorious rapper had declared war on flannel shirts and clogged up the site with CAPS LOCK tweets, the ban was back on faster than you can say "Kim Kardashian for president."

"Stupid?" he muttered again, watching as Twitter spontaneously DDOS'd itself like a robotic bull in a digital china shop.

There was a pause. Then a grin spread slowly across Elon's face, as if he'd just understood the punchline to a particularly tricky joke. "Naaaah," he laughed, slapping the desk.

He looked at the chaos on the screens, the digital calamity his decisions had wrought, and couldn't help but chuckle. There was something amusing about being this absurdly, cosmically, hilariously brilliant.

"Back to the drawing board," he chuckled, picking up a Mars Rover and making it do little jumps across his desk.

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[–] jamesoh5 146 points 2 years ago (17 children)

As a former individual who understands the underlying systems, it seems like they botched deployment of a new feature causing issues and cannot figure out how to solve them.

Most of Twitter is and has been in maintenance mode since acquisition (think of 10 man engineering team and 1 left to handle maintenance).

[–] [email protected] 75 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is why it cracks me up every time when someone is praising Elon for "cutting slack" when firing all those twitter employees. Yes, twitter did not implode immediately. Turns out, people can build software that is stable enough to run in maintenance mode. But good luck dealing with new issues cropping up.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I don't think I've ever met a former individual. What happened? Was it like a Frankenstein thing?

[–] tox_solid 45 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Former individual is just the politically correct way to say dead guy.

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[–] [email protected] 144 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That rate limit is insanely low, even for verified. I’m not verified, but I hit the limit in like 10 minutes of very distracted usage.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 years ago

Yeah, 600/800 sounds like a lot until you realize that includes all the stuff you're just scrolling past in your feed or comments, not even clicking on. I wouldn't be surprised if they even overlooked the fact that ads might count against that cap too. I'm no heavy user but hit that cap in less than 20 minutes of reading people reacting to the news.

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[–] jadedwench 122 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Transcription for the blind: Screenshot of a Twitter post from Elon Musk, Twitter handle @elonmusk, that says:

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

1:01 PM Jul 1, 2023 3.6M Views

-Transcription from a human volunteer. Let me know how I can do better.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (17 children)

Thank you for the transcription, human volunteer :)

The sequence of events from Elon Musk acquiring Twitter to now is an incredible journey.

  • Elon Musk bought a social media company for tens of billions, attempted to back out of the deal but couldn't because of his ineptitude by signing away the ability to reneg on the deal.^[1]

  • Then there was the freedom of speech advocacy from Musk where he ultimately unbanned racists and then he began sharing bigoted Tweets. But it's only freedom of speech for his bigoted supporters, when authoritarian governments ask Musk to censor people/tweets he abides by their requests.^[2]

  • The site becomes inundated with the alt right rife with bigotry.^[3]

  • The whole verified blue check mark debacle where verification became something you could pay for, with people making fake "official" accounts. For example a fake account impersonating a pharmaceutical company caused their stock to drop abruptly following a joke tweet.^[4]

  • Twitter engages in mass layoffs and multiple things break on the site. There are also reports that they can't pay rent in certain locations. Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisors, as they record a 59% reduction in advertising revenue.^[5]

  • Elon Musk posts tweets seemingly apologizing for some of the changes and says he will follow the will of the people by posting polls for users to vote on policy changes. Musk asks if he should step down, to which the majority vote in favour of his removal. He then goes on a tirade about bots after losing in the poll. He goes on to say that only paid subscribers will be permited to vote in future polls. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.^[6]

  • The crème de la crème is Elon Musk implementing a new restriction where you have to be logged in to see tweets. Inadvertently DDOSing his own site.


  1. New York Times - Why Elon Musk Can’t Back Out of Buying Twitter, According to Twitter

  2. Forbes - Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds

  3. The Atlantic -Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network

  4. Forbes - Fake Eli Lilly Twitter Account Claims Insulin Is Free, Stock Falls 4.37%

  5. New York Times - Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue

  6. The Guardian - Elon Musk breaks silence after 10 million Twitter users vote for him to step down

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[–] PlaidDragon 101 points 2 years ago (17 children)

I thought this guy was supposed to be stepping down - didn't he even announce the new CEO?

[–] designatedhacker 61 points 2 years ago (5 children)

She was supposed to ride it the last mile to the dump off a glass cliff. Then she tried to fix it so he's stepping in to finish it off.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Therefore any company that puts out notices or alerts via Twitter should immediately exit the platform. Running their own server on mastodon would be a better bet

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[–] ___hulk 84 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This reeks of him scaling back infrastructure to reduce costs, gets overloaded, and the C-level talent remainings best idea to prop it up is rate limiting.

Pathetic.

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[–] Strangian 81 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Twitter and Reddit both dying at the same time was not what I expected in 2023

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[–] peopleproblems 80 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Maybe I'm dumb, but this is starting to seem like these Tech CEOs are dumber than we thought.

Why not just make 4000 accounts and have distributed scraping? What are they going to do next? "Unverified Twitter accounts can only be accessed 10 times?"

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

This is beyond speedrunning enshittification now...

I'm eager to see what twitter users think of this - lots of people are watching, and corpos taking notes.

Edit: He's announced an increased limit but it's hardly generous IMO.

Spoiler ImageImage of Twitter post where Elon Musk announces a rate limit increase to 8000 for verified users, 800 for unverified users, and 400 for new unverified users

[–] STRIKINGdebate2 51 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think this really will be the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people. I don't think it will immediately kill twitter but it will have a lasting effect. And if not this I am sure he will come up with an even worse policy change within the next 2 months. Something like limiting it to only 10 tweets per day for unverified users.

[–] pennomi 60 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Everyone in the world who uses Twitter to broadcast news to the masses now can’t. Every news org, company, and politician now has dramatically reduced incentive to post on Twitter.

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[–] legion 73 points 2 years ago

Anyone still on Twitter at this point is getting what they asked for. It's like you drove past every "last restroom for X miles" sign, and now you're in the middle of nowhere and have to piss.

[–] dustojnikhummer 70 points 2 years ago (22 children)

Why are so many people suddenly against Twatter burning? I thought we all wanted that?

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 years ago

I bet the throtteling is not caused by data scraping but by Twitter not paying their Google Cloud bills and therefore now with the new month they got services suspended.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] BornVolcano 66 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Image Transcription: Twitter Post:


Elon Musk, @elonmusk

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits

  • Verified accounts are limited to reaching 6000 posts/day
  • Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
  • New unverified accounts to 300/day

^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

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[–] gerowen 62 points 1 year ago (8 children)

He's impulsive and doesn't know when to shut up. I got the distinct impression that, initially, he was absolutely not serious about buying Twitter. It was a joke/jest. BUT, because his antics affected their stock price he actually got forced into the purchase and now he's desperately trying to figure out how to make the purchase worth what he actually paid, which is fine and all, except he seems to be leading by impulse, not by consensus or logic. He wakes up in the morning, has some random ass idea and implements it without any oversight. Even his new CEO straight up admitted that she is basically a straw man CEO who will offer no friction to anything Elon wants to do.

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[–] scottywh 60 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That man has got to legitimately be one of the stupidest motherfuckers to ever luck his ass into a pile of money.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Maybe it was just me but Musk has never seemed like someone who actually understood tech. Just a rich guy who buys up other's work and talks a big game. I knew the second I heard he bought Twitter it was going to crash and burn. He's doing it way faster than I thought possible.

Of course he will eventually say this was all on purposes and not that he is crap at business and tech.

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[–] Khrounose 60 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I see that a lot of people complain about reddit, twitter, and whatever mainstream website completely fuck the consumer, but fail to realize one crucial thing. The only time change happens in mob settings is when the pain of no change is greater than the pain of change. I applaud Elon, spez, and who ever else wishes to put there services behind their paywall whether it’s an API or just simply viewing tweets. Anyone in the know knows that it’s a crock of shit and anyone who isn’t is annoyed to the point where change is preferable. The sooner people figure out posting information, entertainment, and other forms of media/knowledge to the benefit of a company is horrendous the better. Now we have the opportunity to get rid of the corporate greed and basically open-source peoples knowledge from around the globe. Although like with reddit, mob mentality poses a real threat to communities like this one, I trust that you all are normal and level headed individuals who can come to disagreements but still respect eachother (as corny as that sounds). I much prefer it over giving more information to companies who use it to profit off of my content, while I receive nothing.

*Edit: Thank you kind stranger for the reddit gold! Glad you spent real hard cash so I can have reddit premium and reddit coins! The lovely people at reddit will be spending your money sitting on a yacht eating grapes in one hand and lobster in the other. I’m sure they are real thankful too! :) *

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[–] pannacotta__ 56 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Somehow I doubt it's even that. The guy's just a braindead, incompetent moron. I don't think the fucker's even smart enough to realize this is literally the worst possible decision he could've made.

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[–] gornar 55 points 1 year ago

Sometimes the real DDOS are the companies we buy along the way

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This isn't mildly infuriating, Musk is being the biggest fedi advocate out there! He's selflessly nuking his own site so he can drive traffic to decentralized alternatives. This is a good thing lol, and should be an important lesson on link rot, and that social media should never be the primary method of communication.

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[–] bappity 52 points 2 years ago (2 children)

limiting engagement an app that RELIES ON ENGAGEMENT????? IT CAN'T POSSIBLY GET DUMBER THAN THIS???

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] prashanthvsdvn 45 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What did he even think the purpose of APIs were. Data scraping puts unnecessary load on servers only to scrape out majority of the content. It’s funny how he shoots himself in the leg and now complain.

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[–] boilingpenguin 44 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Brilliant move to help sell more ads on the platform: limit how many people will even be able to see those ads

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I mean I see why Reddit and Twitter are doing it. We're in a really weird transitional period of the internet right now, for better or for worse. They're doing it to prevent scraping, because why would you read all these garbage tweets to get to the information you need when an ChatGPT can spit out the exact information without fluff? It's taking their content without any funding back to them, effectively stealing their revenue.

So what are these companies to do? Honestly I hope this is birth to a new form of social media, and this benefits the fedi greatly. It will be unsustainable to run large social media companies like theirs who profit off of user data and content. Whereas tons of fedi servers ran by hobbiest, effectively ran out of pocket or by donations, is much more sustainable. They're doing it for community and more pure content that everyone wants without corporate fluff. If ChatGPT scrapes the fedi community, that's okay because the fedi isn't designed to make money so nothing is lost.

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