“Read/Rate Limit Exceeded” and “#TwitterDown” have emerged as the two most prominent trending topics on the Twitter app in the United States, capturing the attention of users who have access to it. As of Saturday noon, “Rate Limit Exceeded” had garnered over 40,000 tweets, indicating the scale of the issue.
The reports of outages began surfacing around 8 am EST, as reported by DownDetector and steadily increased throughout the morning. By noon EST, Down Detector registered a staggering count of more than 7,400 outage reports affecting the website.
Users, including CNN journalists, raised concerns about their Twitter feeds failing to load and receiving an error message stating, “Sorry, you are rate limited.
Responding to the growing problems, the billionaire owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, took to the platform to explain that temporary limits had been imposed to address rampant data scraping and system manipulation.
According to his tweet, verified accounts were limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts were allowed only 600. New unverified accounts had an even lower limit of 300 posts a day.
In an effort to generate revenue, Musk introduced a blue verification checkmark for users who subscribed to the Twitter Blue service. This move aimed to entice more users into signing up for the premium service.
Following the uproar over the imposed limits, Musk later announced his intention to raise the limits “soon.” The new proposed limits were set at 8,000 tweets a day for verified users, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified accounts.
The widespread connection problems led to considerable frustration among Twitter users. Other trending topics in the US during this time included “Wtf Twitter” and “Thanks Elon.”
Interestingly, just the day before, Twitter seemed to restrict access to its platform for users who were not logged into an account. It remained unclear whether this change was an intentional policy update or a technical glitch.
Most of the reported issues on Saturday were primarily concentrated on the website, accounting for 44% of the problems, while the app experienced 39% of the reported disruptions.
Twitter users had previously encountered similar extensive service disruptions in March, marking one of the largest outages since Elon Musk took over the company. At that time, more than 8,000 users reported experiencing disruptions.
In his ongoing effort to revamp the platform and regain advertisers’ trust, Musk has undertaken significant changes, including appointing a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, to steer Twitter toward a positive trajectory.
