Twitter is now limiting how many posts users can read each day

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has said that all users will be limited to reading a certain number of posts each day to prevent data scraping. It comes just a day after the site started forcing users to log in to read any content. The forced logins are a temporary step, according to the billionaire.

In his latest tweet, Musk says that verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts are limited to reading 600 posts per day, and new unverified accounts can only read 300 posts per day. He called these temporary limits too but it’s not clear what the answer is to Twitter’s data scraping problem.

One user commented on the change explaining that the new limits will break people’s addiction to Twitter and that “we will all be free”, to which Musk responded with “touch grass again”. It’s very unlikely that Twitter’s motivation for the change is about addiction, and much more likely to do with the fact that it wants scrapers to pay $42,000 for API access.

No indication has been given about how long these “temporary” measures will be in place, but unless Twitter finds a way to prevent bots from scraping content, it’s hard to see how restrictions will be relaxed again on the website.

The clampdown began all the way back in April when the company disabled search functionality for users that didn’t have an account. It was then reported yesterday that no Twitter content could be viewed at all without an account.

While Elon Musk has become a polarizing figure thanks to the remarks he has made and the actions he has taken over the last year, it’s not only Twitter that’s clamping down but Reddit too. Reddit announced that it would be charging $12,000 for 50 million requests via its API which has forced some third-party Reddit apps to close down.