Twitter’s reading limits: Genius or disastrous?

Twitter owner Elon Musk returned with yet another announcement on Saturday - this time limiting post visibility for users to curb "data scraping and system manipulation".

While it caused much consternation among users, industry experts said it is a sound business move, which may help the microblogging platform save on cloud bills whilst prompting users towards a verification badge.

Late on Saturday night, India time, Musk tweeted that verified accounts were being temporarily limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, unverified accounts were capped at reading 600 posts a day and new unverified accounts at 300 a day. He later increased the limit to 10,000, 1000, and 500 posts, respectively.

Also Read: Elon Musk slaps limit on number of tweets users can read; know what it means

Sanjana Samraj, a regular user who posts weekly threads on education is contemplating a Twitter Blue subscription shortly. “ Twitter is moving towards becoming a lot more creator-oriented and If I want to monetise my content now, I need to be verified,” she reasoned, adding that in the absence of the “blue tick” her audience reach will be impacted negatively.

Musk’s announcement came a day after the Twitter CTO made it mandatory for users to sign in to view tweets.

It remains unclear how Twitter will count a post as read - whether it will comprise simply scrolling past a tweet or interacting with the tweet in some manner.

However, in the absence of a global competitor, Musk appears to have surplus headroom for experiment.

“At the moment it looks like a short-term strategy with wide scope for moderations in the absence of a global competitor fighting for market share,” noted Sachin Kumar, founder of digital marketing platform Bottleopeners.

In the meanwhile, he sees noise from trolls and bots dumbing down.

According to market research and analysis platform Statista, Twitter hosted 368 million monthly active users worldwide as of December 2022. This figure is expected to plummet to approximately 335 million by 2024, reflecting a decline of around 5 per cent.

Also Read: Twitter now requires users to sign in to view tweets

This would still dwarf similar platforms like Mastodon, BlueSky and India’s own Koo.

Others like business and brand strategy expert Harish Bijoor believe the jury is still out on the success of the move.

“Elon Musk is looking to monetise. Everything that can bring revenue is being explored. Thus far, most of these explorations have been duds,” he said.

“If the platform is fully monetised, it will lose relevance as the town square for discussion,” further cautioned Srinivas Alavilli, a Bengaluru-based Tweeter. “The sanctity of the blue tick is anyway gone. It just means you can afford it,” he added.

Experts who spoke to DH also seemed skeptical about Musk’s concern for data scraping. While Kumar believes it is not a new idea, Bijoor said: “If not Twitter, there are enough mediums that will allow you to scrape for free.”

Data scraping refers to a process wherein content is extracted from one website, often without permission, to be displayed on another.