If you try to access Twitter without being connected, you will now come across a page encouraging you to do so: impossible for unregistered Internet users to access the content of the social network.
In a tweet, which ironically broke view records, Elon Musk (replaced in June by Linda Yaccarino) also announced restrictions for users with an account. These are “temporary limits” applied “to remedy the extreme levels of data collection and system manipulation”, operated according to him by organizations specializing in artificial intelligence.
This Sunday, July 2, the majority shareholder of Twitter assured that these limitations have been extended: up to 10,000 tweets can be viewed per day by “verified” accounts. That is, those who bought a subscription to Twitter Blue, the service launched last November by Musk, or obtained the famous “check mark” thanks to their membership in a verified organization. Or those who have been granted it as a personality liked by Musk, such as author Stephen King or basketball player Lebron James, suppose The Verge.
For unverified users, this number increases to a maximum of 1,000 tweets per day. And up to 500 daily for new unverified accounts.
Massive harvest
According to Musk, these restrictions were necessary because “several hundred organizations (maybe even more) were harvesting data from Twitter so aggressively that it was affecting the experience of ordinary users.”
This information, he said, was used by companies developing generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which need to collect large datasets from the web to train their models. “Virtually every company that does AI, from start-ups to the biggest groups in the world, was collecting large amounts of data, Musk said. servers for the sole fact of justifying the indecent valuation of certain AI start-ups.”
Already last December, Musk had cut off access data from its social network to OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot. It had subsequently opened an extension to the public to allow it to analyze information from all sites – including Twitter.
Monetizable users
“The reason why I introduced a ‘view limit’ is that we are all addicted to Twitter and need to go outside”, also added ironically the general manager of the Californian group. But other explanations can be put forward to interpret this decision. The platform’s teams have indeed been decimated by massive waves of layoffs, and could simply encounter difficulties in maintaining its infrastructure with reduced staff.
Following the massive decline in revenue and attractiveness of Twitter since its acquisition, Musk could also seek to monetize with advertisers the data of the 500 million people who visit the site each month without being connected. By encouraging them to create an account, the platform would be able to collect their information and expand their base of potential advertising targets, supposes Mashable.
A setback, however: with the need to log in to view content from Twitter, Google will not be able to list and present it effectively on its search engine. This could cause a drop in traffic to the social network.