The recent announcement by Elon Musk regarding Twitter’s decision to temporarily restrict the number of tweets users can read per day has garnered attention, including a reaction from Twitter co-founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey. The move aims to address the excessive use of Twitter’s data by artificial intelligence (AI) companies.
And I do hope they consider building on truly censorship-resistant open protocols like bitcoin and nostr to help ease that burden. Good for all, and critical to preserve the open internet.
— jack (@jack) July 1, 2023
Under the new restrictions, verified accounts are limited to reading 10,000 tweets per day, while non-verified users, who comprise the majority of Twitter’s user base, are limited to 1,000 tweets per day. New unverified accounts have an even lower limit of 500 tweets. Musk highlighted the need to curb data scraping and system manipulation by third-party platforms as the reason behind these measures.
Following Musk’s announcement, “Goodbye Twitter” became a trending topic in the United States, showcasing the mixed reactions from users. However, Musk did not provide a specific timeline for how long these limitations would remain in effect. It is worth noting that the day before this announcement, Musk had revealed that reading tweets on Twitter without an account would no longer be possible.
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The use of social media data by AI firms has been a topic of concern, as they rely on it to develop AI models capable of human-like responses. Twitter’s decision to address the data scraping issue mirrors similar actions taken by other social media platforms. In June, Reddit raised prices for third-party developers using its data, which caused controversy among regular users who accessed the site through those platforms. This marked a departure from the previous practice of providing social media data for free or at a minimal cost.
As the AI sector continues to grow rapidly, social media platforms face the challenge of balancing user access with protecting their data from abuse by third-party entities. These recent restrictions reflect the ongoing efforts to navigate this evolving landscape.