Twitter says rate limits were to help thwart bots, ‘small percentage’ of users currently affected

Recent usage limits on Twitter were implemented to “detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors,” the company said Tuesday, adding that only a “small percentage” of users are currently affected.

“To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots from our platform,” Twitter said in a blog post. “Any advance notice on these actions would have allowed bad actors to alter their behavior to evade detection.”

The company said the actions are intended to prevent accounts from scraping users’ public data to build artificial intelligence models and from manipulating use of the platform.

Twitter owner Elon Musk announced the limits on Saturday, saying users would only be permitted to read a certain number of posts per day due to “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation.”

Twitter billed the restrictions as temporary, and they were tiered based on a user’s verification status on the platform. The update came as many Twitter users encountered error messages when trying to access the platform.

“Currently, the restrictions affect a small percentage of people using the platform, and we will provide an update when the work is complete. As it relates to our customers, effects on advertising have been minimal,” Twitter said Tuesday.