On Saturday, visitors to the Twitter website encountered error messages like “rate limit exceeded” and “cannot retrieve tweets.” This followed an issue on Friday where non-logged in users were redirected to a sign-up page. Elon Musk, who took over Twitter last October, described this redirection as a temporary emergency measure due to excessive data scraping. Musk explained that artificial intelligence companies were scraping large amounts of data, causing degraded service for regular users. He emphasized the frustration of bringing on additional servers to facilitate the valuation of AI startups. Musk’s initial action upon joining Twitter was redirecting visitors to the Explore page instead of the sign-up page. To combat future issues, he implemented restrictions on verified and unverified accounts, limiting their ability to read posts.
Although Fortune reached out to Twitter for comment on the error messages, the company did not respond immediately. Users logged in as unverified experienced error messages stating they were “rate limited” when attempting to view tweets from accounts like Musk and Fortune. Twitter’s trending topics on Saturday primarily consisted of complaints about the platform’s issues, with hashtags like #TwitterDown and “WTF Twitter.” The Downdetector website also showed a peak of over 7,500 Twitter users reporting problems with the social network.
Since Musk’s ownership, Twitter has undergone numerous changes, including mass layoffs, technical difficulties, and impulsive decisions that were later reversed. In February, users in North America were unable to send messages due to reaching the daily tweet limit. Musk instructed employees to prioritize system stability leading up to the Super Bowl. Furthermore, in early March, users were unable to click on links within tweets, receiving an error message stating that their current API plan did not provide access to that endpoint.
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