Twitter limiting number of tweets users can read per day, Musk says

LONDON, UK - Elon Musk has announced that Twitter is temporarily limiting the number of tweets people can read in a day, as thousands of users reported problems accessing the site.

Musk, who took over Twitter in October after buying it for US$44 billion, announced on Saturday that verified accounts are being limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, reported German news agency (dpa).

Unverified accounts can only read 600 posts a day, with new unverified accounts limited to just 300 per day, he said.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the temporary limit to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.

In the UK, a peak of 5,126 people complained of problems accessing the site at 4.12pm on Saturday, according to the website Downdetector - which tracks online outages.

In the US, some 7,461 people complained of issues as of 4.15pm UK time, the site notes.

#Twitterdown and RIP Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying 'Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again'. - BERNAMA-dpa