Twitter becomes first social media network to limit how many posts users can see

When discussing social media apps, we usually envision an app service designed to pull you into doom-scrolling on your phone for hours. Social media networks want you to spend all of your hours on them, so they can learn more about what you like and use that to serve you with targeted ads and thus make money. Twitter, unironically, has become the first social media network that has placed a hard limit on how many posts you can see in a day before you get locked out of the site.

Twitter imposes daily limits on all its users

Twitter owner and ex-CEO Elon Musk announced that Twitter is applying temporary limits to how many posts users can read daily.

According to the announcement, Twitter is taking this step to address “extreme levels” of data scraping and “system manipulation.” Verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts daily, unverified accounts to 600 posts per day, while new unverified accounts are limited to reading 300 posts daily. The announcement does not clarify the separating difference between “unverified account” and “new unverified account,” though it does mention that the rate limits are temporary.

A few hours later, these limits were increased to 10,000 posts, 1,000 posts, and 500 posts per day, respectively, for those tiers of users.

Elon Musk also retweeted a parody account of himself that ridiculed Twitter users as being Twitter addicts and that Elon is supposedly doing a “good deed for the world.”

The billionaire owner of Twitter also promoted “stepping away from the phone” to “see your friends and family.”

These announcements come shortly after Twitter prohibited unregistered users from viewing tweets on the social media website. Since Musk’s takeover in 2022, Twitter has eliminated over 80% of its workforce, as Musk revealed in a Spaces interview.

Users complain of “Rate limit exceeded” error on Twitter

Many Twitter users began reporting a “Rate limit exceeded” error. This error would freeze the user’s timeline and display no further tweets, asking them to “wait a few moments then try again” and causing frustration.

These errors pertain to the newly imposed rate limits on reading posts.

Twitter previously had limits on several engagement actions that users could do on the website. Still, those limits were very generous and designed to deter bots and spammers, so average users would seldom run into any blocks. However, the new limits are comparatively much easier to reach, and they practically stop you from using the social media network any further.

There is also no indication of how much of your tweet quota you have used up already and no clarity on whether seeing the same tweet twice (for example, on subsequent refreshes) would count once or twice against your quota. If you use tools like Tweetdeck that load multiple lists of tweets simultaneously, you will be rate-limited very early in the day.

Further, we presume the limits also include reading your own tweets.

Rate limits also affect genuine uses of Twitter

Not everyone uses Twitter in the same way. While many users use the social media website lightheartedly to share memes and engage in tomfoolery, many use the platform for serious use cases. Twitter was once revered as a source of instant news and verified information, both locally and globally, and these rate limits decrease the platform’s utility in these use cases. Not only does everyone need a Twitter account to view tweets, but how many tweets they can view in a day is also severely limited unless they become a Twitter Blue subscriber.

If you are frustrated by the recent changes, here are the top 5 Twitter alternatives you should try.

We could not reach Twitter for comment as the social media network no longer has a PR unit, and its press email auto-responds to emails with a poop emoji.