What does Twitter’s rate limit exceeded mean?

THE weekend beginning July 1 brought chaos for thousands of Twitter users after they were unable to access the app and website properly.

Outages on the social media site were reported across the UK and the US, with many Twitter users receiving a message that read: “Rate limit exceeded”.

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What is Twitter’s new rate limit? 

Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed on Saturday, July 1, that the app had instituted a new rate limits feature.

He has since decided to increase the limits twice.

At the time of writing, verified accounts have a limit of 10,000 posts, while unverified accounts have 600.

New unverified accounts can read 500 posts a day.

Musk, who stepped down as CEO of Twitter earlier in 2023 but still owns the app, initially said the limits were temporary but he did not say when they would be reversed.

What does it mean when you exceed the rate limit? 

Many Twitter users have complained of receiving a “rate limit exceeded” message on their account.

The notification also states: “Please wait a few moments then try again.”

Due to Tesla boss Musk’s new limits, the number of tweets that each user can see in a day has been restricted.

If you see the “rate limit exceeded” message it means you will not be able to read any more posts that day.

No new tweets will show on your home feed, and will you not be able to read any replies to tweets that have already loaded on the feed.

You will also not see any tweets when visiting somebody’s page once you’ve exceeded your limit.

Users have expressed concern over what the exact limits of the new protocols are.

For example, if the amount includes tweets that somebody scrolls past on their home feed, the limit could get used up very quickly.

What has Elon Musk said about Twitter’s new rate limit?

Musk first spoke out about the Twitter outages on Saturday, July 1.

In a tweet, he told his followers that he had temporarily limited how many posts account could reach day.

He explained that this was “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”

Elon, who has nine children, initially stated that verified accounts were limited to reading 6000 posts per day, while unverified accounts were allowed to read 600 posts.

New unverified accounts, however, were limited to 300 per day.

It was later reported that he had expanded these limits, giving verified accounts a limit of 10,000 posts, unverified accounts 600, and new unverified accounts 500 posts a day.

In response to the backlash over the limits that had been set, Musk, musician Grimes’ ex, joked that that people will now be able to “touch grass again”.

He retweeted a picture of grass on his Twitter account, in reference to the phrase “touch grass” which encourages people to get off their phone and get outside more.