Thousands of Twitter users experienced a service outage on Saturday, resulting in widespread frustration and the creation of hashtags such as “TwitterDown” and “RateLimitExceeded.” The outage began around 8 a.m. EST and continued throughout the afternoon, according to DownDetector. By 1 p.m., there were already over 7,000 reports of the website being inaccessible.
Many users reported issues such as being unable to retrieve tweets or receiving an error message stating, “Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.” This left users unable to engage with the platform and share updates.
In a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk, who assumed control of Twitter in 2022, took to the platform himself to address the situation around 1 p.m. Musk announced that temporary limits had been implemented to combat “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation.” These limits included verified accounts being restricted to reading 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts limited to 600 posts per day, and new unverified accounts limited to 300 posts per day. This move was met with mixed reactions from users, with some directly reaching out to Musk expressing their frustrations and confusion.
This isn’t the first time that Twitter has faced service disruptions since Musk took over. In March, the platform experienced one of its largest outages, affecting over 8,000 users. These frequent disruptions are raising concerns among users about the reliability and functionality of the platform.
It remains to be seen how Twitter will address these ongoing issues and whether the temporary limits imposed by Musk will have a significant impact on data scraping and system manipulation. Users continue to hope for a stable and uninterrupted experience on the platform, enabling them to engage and connect with their followers.
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