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Twitter opens up about those pesky new tweet-reading limits on the platform
- Twitter has clarified its latest move to impose limits on the platform.
- The company says any advance notice to users about the limits would have prompted bad actors and bots to evade detection.
- The platform says that the rate limits affect only a small percentage of users and have had a minimal effect on advertising.
Elon Musk shocked users last week when he announced “temporary” limits to the number of tweets they could read on the platform. Unregistered users were also blocked from viewing tweets. While some argued that the company is simply attempting to cut costs, Twitter has now published a blog post further clarifying the reason behind its sudden and highly unpopular move.
“To ensure the authenticity of our user base, we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots from our platform. That’s why we temporarily limited usage so we could detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform,” the company writes.
Twitter says any advance notice to users about the rate limits would have “allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection.”
The company also reassured advertisers that the current limits of Twitter affect only a small percentage of people and that effects on advertising have been “minimal.”
It’s unclear when Twitter will reverse these rate limits, but the company says it’s working to prevent bot accounts and other bad actors from scraping people’s public Twitter data to build AI models. The platform also wants to stop bots from manipulating people and conversations.
“We will provide an update when the work is complete,” said Twitter.