what. the fuck.
This is Musk’s “Reichstag Fire” moment for Twitter.
The rate limiting is not because of “extreme manipulation”, but because of piss-poor code that Twitter deployed as part of their change to only allow tweets to be viewed if logged in. Twitter is effectively DDoSing itself right now. But, it creates an opportunity for Musk to create a narrative.
These “temporary” limits will probably remain inevitably, as they provide another benefit to Twitter - they drive Blue subscriptions. Unfortunately, they also repel free users from using the platform entirely, and at a much higher ratio.
Twitter is going to become even more of a cesspool than it already is at an alarming rate. Crazy how many established social media platforms have decided to crumble at the exact same time.
Elon Musk, the latest billionaire owner of the online screaming match known as Twitter, sat slumped at his desk, staring at a wall of monitors blinking with a technicolor smorgasbord of error messages. The reason? He’d just let Twitter’s hosting contract with Google lapse because he thought it’d be fun to see if he could migrate it somewhere else. The results? Not so fun.
A comment on Reddit had caught his eye, and he couldn’t shake it. “Every now and then Elon must have a moment of clarity. Where it occurs to him ‘Maybe I am just stupid?’ But then he violently buries the thought.”
“Stupid?” he scoffed aloud to his empty office, sending a mini landslide of Mars Rover prototypes tumbling off his desk. “I’m a genius.”
He remembered how smart he’d felt when he decided to axe the account verification system, only to reinstate it after a week of high-profile mix-ups that included the Dalai Lama being mistaken for a llama enthusiast.
And the content moderation! Who needs it? Well, as it turned out, everyone. Without it, Twitter had turned into a feral wilderness of conspiracy theories, insult slinging, and more unsolicited pictures of eggplants than a greengrocer’s catalog.
And then there was Kanye. “Free Kanye!” he’d declared one afternoon after one too many rocket fuel coffees. But after the notorious rapper had declared war on flannel shirts and clogged up the site with CAPS LOCK tweets, the ban was back on faster than you can say “Kim Kardashian for president.”
“Stupid?” he muttered again, watching as Twitter spontaneously DDOS’d itself like a robotic bull in a digital china shop.
There was a pause. Then a grin spread slowly across Elon’s face, as if he’d just understood the punchline to a particularly tricky joke. “Naaaah,” he laughed, slapping the desk.
He looked at the chaos on the screens, the digital calamity his decisions had wrought, and couldn’t help but chuckle. There was something amusing about being this absurdly, cosmically, hilariously brilliant.
“Back to the drawing board,” he chuckled, picking up a Mars Rover and making it do little jumps across his desk.
As a former individual who understands the underlying systems, it seems like they botched deployment of a new feature causing issues and cannot figure out how to solve them.
Most of Twitter is and has been in maintenance mode since acquisition (think of 10 man engineering team and 1 left to handle maintenance).
That rate limit is insanely low, even for verified. I’m not verified, but I hit the limit in like 10 minutes of very distracted usage.
Transcription for the blind: Screenshot of a Twitter post from Elon Musk, Twitter handle @elonmusk, that says:
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day
1:01 PM Jul 1, 2023 3.6M Views
-Transcription from a human volunteer. Let me know how I can do better.
I thought this guy was supposed to be stepping down - didn’t he even announce the new CEO?
This reeks of him scaling back infrastructure to reduce costs, gets overloaded, and the C-level talent remainings best idea to prop it up is rate limiting.
Pathetic.
Therefore any company that puts out notices or alerts via Twitter should immediately exit the platform. Running their own server on mastodon would be a better bet
Typically, automating or paying someone to manually push out updates to as many channels as possible is the most advantageous option. Realistically, having a website, an associated RSS feed option, Twitter, something like a Mastodon account somewhere, and a text update option would probably cover most of the bases.
You can follow any Mastodon account as an RSS feed so that would be two in one.
Separate question, but can’t you follow Mastodon profiles on Lemmy?
In theory yes (or at least, it works the other way), in practice seems janky. Fediverse has seen some insane expansion recently and I’d hope there’s some talented devs in amongst the influx, so they should get it working at some point.
Not that I know of. Lemmy is part of the fediverse and you can follow/post to Lemmy communities on Mastodon but AFAIK Lemmy doesn’t have a system to follow other users. I think Kbin does.
I find this more mildlyhumorous than infuriating. I’m looking forward to a new era where every news article no longer includes a string of embedded tweets. :) As a non-twitter user, this certainly doesn’t encourage me to bother making an account.
It’s honestly extremely humorous. I made a Twitter account in 2015 because it was a requirement for a emergency management crisis communications class I was taking for work. After the course ended I didn’t log into it again until Musk bought Twitter. I knew it was going to be a hilarious dumpster fire and wanted to watch it melt down in real time. It hasn’t disappointed. But this most recent thing about the rate limits is so hilariously dumb I figured I’d seen enough. Deleted the app off my phone yesterday.
As you point out, Twitter’s death is going to mean a huge improvement to journalism. Someone on Lemmy mentioned yesterday how nice it is to not be on Reddit which had gotten to be like 80% Twitter screenshots. Twitter and Reddit diving like this at the same time is going to be a net positive.
Not sure how good it is that the only remaining Social Networks are owner by Meta (I don’t count YT as a Social Media as I never use it to engage in comments there).
Edit: Ig there is tiktok now, too. Still it makes Metas slice of the Social Media pie bigger.
But Meta doesn’t own social media. They have some social media platforms that are finding direct, open-source alternatives to their service…for FREE. The days of uncontested, corporate-controlled, AI-manipulated social media have come to an end.
I get it’s funny if you like don’t really have a use for twitter, but it sucks in some ways because twitter is one of the few ‘global’ platforms. I can follow and keep up to date with artists over in Japan because a lot of them use twitter and that’s accessible to me. Remove twitter however and their main posting platform defaults to something like pixiv or niconico…which isn’t very open and receptive to anyone who isn’t a Japanese speaker. And I’m sure anyone from the west who has their head in more Chinese or Korean spheres is having the same issue…and vice versa. I know apparently sites like tumblr aren’t very popular over in Japan because of how it works and at least from what I’ve seen in the last few days, that’s becoming a lot of artist’s emergency second platform
I never understood why they embedded tweets into articles instead of using screenshots. I figured it was a terms and conditions thing from Twitter. But it leaves them prone to a tweet being deleted or, you know, what’s happening now.
it made sense when it was making it trustworthy, harder to fake a link to the original than a screenshot
used to get a public view from those links which were usually click-bait level. ad block made it readable. then I got a twitter account only to be booted after 3 months for some obscure community offense. now links go to a login paywall. useless. bye tw
Maybe I’m dumb, but this is starting to seem like these Tech CEOs are dumber than we thought.
Why not just make 4000 accounts and have distributed scraping? What are they going to do next? “Unverified Twitter accounts can only be accessed 10 times?”
This is beyond speedrunning enshittification now…
I’m eager to see what twitter users think of this - lots of people are watching, and corpos taking notes.
Edit: He’s announced an increased limit but it’s hardly generous IMO.
Spoiler Image
Anyone still on Twitter at this point is getting what they asked for. It’s like you drove past every “last restroom for X miles” sign, and now you’re in the middle of nowhere and have to piss.
Why are so many people suddenly against Twatter burning? I thought we all wanted that?
Oh I’m all for it. Let it crash and burn. Any time a billionaire gets embarrassed is okay with me, because it’s the only thing that will hurt them.
Embarrassment and submarine implosions
I personally use it for manga and following japanese artists who seem to post art and have discussions there
I made a Twitter account in like 2009, in order to follow breaking hockey trades and free agent signings.
Then I realized that these are all posted to hockey forums at ludicrous speed, so I just stayed on the hockey forums.
There must be people refreshing Twitter just to be first to repost stuff to other social media sites for clout. It’s part of what makes Twitter so gross.
Also, what Twitter has done to ‘journalism’ where 99/100 ‘journalistic articles’ are just writing about what the author read on Twitter that day. It’s all just so gross to me.
Sorry, I rambled. I meant to just agree that I also signed up for Twitter for a niche interest. Although I quickly dropped it again, way before all the activism took over the platform and people started losing their jobs over tweets they liked or made.
Your point about articles that are just reposts of what the journalist read that day hits home so hard.
At what point did it become generally acceptable to throw some incredibly bland commentary along with embedded tweets or reddit posts and call it an article?
I hope he continues razing it to the ground.
I quit like 6 months before Elon musk ever even mentioned buying Twitter. This is all pretty hilarious for me. Although I did occasionally poke my head in using a front end open source alternative like fritter or nitter or you don’t need to log in.
But those haven’t been working either because of the latest s***
It’s been more than six months since the purchase went through. I believe he closed the deal in Oct 2022. He fought that for a while before it happened. The claim of intent to purchase happened earlier that year.
Don’t worry. My sense of time has been fucked up ever since the first pan lockdowns, too.
(they said “like 6 months before he bought it”, not “like 6 months ago, before he bought it”)
I am against it, because it means 1 less datasource for data scientist like myself.
This is what I’m saying, I think people are just really addicted to Twitter and refuse to let it die combined with a lot of people online being far left and hating anything right of Antifa
You don’t need to simultaneously say something stupid and loudly announce you’re a right-winger - only one of those things is needed to get the message.
I have beliefs that would be considered left leaning and ones that would be considered right leaning.
You know, like a normal person aware of complexity and nuance
i.e. you’re a fence sitter that supports corporate profits over human life and environmental awareness, a.k.a. a right-winger
Fence sitter implies I’m neutral and not decided about issues. No, I’m decided in my beliefs, I just don’t fit into either side. For example, I’m pro unrestricted civilian gun ownership but I’m also pro abortion. I’m anti illegal immigration but also anti religion.
What does that make me again? Undecided?
Yes, it does mean you’re undecided, but worse yet, your wording tells me you haven’t even been made aware of what you should decide about in the first place. The issues you’ve raised have been contrasted as if dichotomies, when that’s not even close to true. It’s good that you agree abortions are the choice of the mother, as that’s the bare minimum we should expect of a rational human being who’s not evil. Then you immediately contrast it by asserting you haven’t even thought about your own morality yet – what does “unrestricted civilian gun ownership” even mean? Could I roll up to your front yard in a Panzer? Maybe you’d invite me in for some coffee as I hold a glock made of pure Uranium? Besides that, “anti illegal immigration” is a largely meaningless statement – everyone is, even “illegal immigrants”. They’d rather have the stupid law allow them to visit legally.
Point is, the divide doesn’t lie between political parties, but between choosing to be evil and support a capitalist dystopia where money is worth more than lives, or be good.
between choosing to be evil and support a capitalist dystopia where money is worth more than lives
So you are a communist. What makes you think that you have the right of saying what should be decided or not? If I had to pick between hypercapitalism and communism, I would pick capitalism. Why? Because my country was raped by communists for over 40 years. Are you American? You sound American.
It’s good that you agree abortions are the choice of the mother,
No, I think it should be a decision for both parties, because by nature you need a father and a mother.
what does “unrestricted civilian gun ownership” even mean? Could I roll up to your front yard in a Panzer?
If it’s road legal and insured, why not? Actually in many European countries you can own a tank legally, just without the weaponry
Maybe you’d invite me in for some coffee as I hold a glock made of pure Uranium?
Uranium no, that would kill both of us, but polymer why not? There is a shooting range 3 blocks away, lets blast some targets!
– what does “unrestricted civilian gun ownership” even mean?
That you should be able to legally own really any form of firearm (nuclear weaponry to be considered at some other time). Want a fully automatic AR15 or a Kalach? Go for it. What I don’t mean by unrestricted is licenses. Guns owners should be licensed, weapons registered. Hmmm, almost like we already have this system all over the planet with motor vehicles, so just copy that system.
They’d rather have the stupid law allow them to visit legally.
It’s called a visa. And what gives them a “right” to any particular country? If I cross to work in Germany, I can do so legally because I’m a European citizen. However, if I wanted to work in the US or Canada, I would need a work visa. That is the legal way. Nobody is entitled to anything. Not me, not you, not economic migrants. The only people who deserve our help are actual war refugees. You know, like in Ukraine. They don’t run to Germany for cash, they ran to the nearest safe country (Slovakia, Poland) for actual safety, ie no rocket in their home.
the divide doesn’t lie between political parties
Given you think anything left is good, anything center or right is bad, the divide is between US political parties for you.
But feel free to give me any more questions that you think I’m “undecided” about. I’m very well decided on pretty much anything. Or you can just do “too long don’t read”, I don’t really mind either way.
Have a nice 4th of July!
You’re an insane person
I more so believe it’s insane to go with policies that either harm or impair people, but I’m aware there are other opinions on the matter.
Welcome to centrism my friend. Grill is that way, beer fridge is that way, and there is a shooting range behind the house. The left hates us, the right hates us, life is goooood
I bet the throtteling is not caused by data scraping but by Twitter not paying their Google Cloud bills and therefore now with the new month they got services suspended.
