Twitter introduces post viewing cap over 'data scraping'

Twitter owner Elon Musk announced late on Saturday that the company was temporarily restricting the daily number of tweets users could see over concerns on "data scrapers and system manipulation" — much to the chagrin of everyday users.

"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," he said in a tweet, drawing fire from users.

In a later tweet, Musk said that the limit would be raised to 8,000, 800, and 400 tweets, respectively, for verified, unverified, and new unverified users.

The move to implement what has been called a paywall due to the much higher limit offered to paying Twitter Blue subscribers, was criticized by many of the platform's users as many called on the billionaire to reverse course.

"Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience," Musk previously said when Twitter started requiring users to log in to see a tweet.

The move has raised many questions, including as to the limit would include any tweet that appears on their screens.