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On Saturday, thousands of Twitter users from various countries experienced difficulties accessing the social media platform. Many discovered the temporary Twitter limits on usage. And the hashtags "Rate Limit Exceeded" and "#TwitterDown" trended among those who were able to post to the app. 

Reports of outages began in the early morning and continued to rise throughout the day, with over 7,400 outage reports recorded by noon EST. According to DownDetector by 6:30 pm the reported outages had dropped to an average of 300 to 500 which is typical on the platform.

Users complained that their feeds were not loading and encountered error messages stating, "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again." Other errors indicated that the site was unable to retrieve tweets. 

Temporary Twitter Limits

In response to the issues, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced temporary limits on the number of tweets that can be read per day.

Musk clarified that these limitations are intended to address the problem of excessive data scraping and system manipulation on Twitter. The restrictions went into effect immediately and apply even to replies to users' tweets.

Initially, Musk stated that verified accounts could read up to 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts were limited to 600 posts, and new unverified accounts were restricted to 300 posts.

However, Musk later increased the limits to 8,000 posts for verified accounts, 800 posts for unverified accounts, and 400 posts for new unverified accounts.

Data scraping involves collecting information from online sources and aggregating it outside the original website.

In 2020, Facebook filed a lawsuit against two companies for installing extensions that scraped sensitive data from Facebook and Instagram. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement with a permanent injunction prohibiting further scraping.

The connectivity issues faced by Twitter users prompted widespread frustration. Trending topics in the US included "Wtf twitter" and "Thanks Elon." This incident follows a recent change where Twitter seemed to restrict access for non-logged-in users, although it is unclear if this was an intentional update or a glitch. 

User Reactions

The majority of reported problems occurred on the website (44%), followed by issues reported on the app (39%). The platform faces ongoing challenges.

The recent outages have posed challenges for users, including whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is currently living in Russia. Snowden highlighted the impact on his engagement and reading experience.

 Streamer Charlie, also known as Moist Critical, expressed concern over the negative consequences these issues could have on the app's popularity.

The Twitter Spaces feature has been utilized as an online campaign tool, with notable figures such as Gov. Ron DeSantis and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaging in conversations with Elon Musk.

 Meanwhile, former CEO Jack Dorsey has provided updates on his latest project, Nostr, as he seeks developers to contribute to its development.