Twitter rate-limits itself into a weekend of chaos
- Reference: 1688407151
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/07/03/twitter_rate_limits_itself_into/
- Source link:
It began on the afternoon of Saturday, July 1 with a [1]tweet from Musk informing tweeps that harsh rate limits were being enacted "to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation". Under the new order, plain-old unverified users (ie, those that opted not to pay for Twitter Blue) were told they could only see 600 posts a day, with new accounts limited to just 400 tweet views.
Verified accounts were awarded the right to view 6,000 tweets, so chalk that up as one more benefit that comes with that Blue subscription.
[2]
It only took a few hours for Musk to [3]update that total, allowing 8,000/800/400 views for verified, unverified and new users, respectively. That was followed shortly after by [4]news that the limits were increased to 10k/1k/500, but it's unclear if those increases were ever applied or when the rate limiting of Twitter would end.
[5]
[6]
The Register asked about the current status of rate limits at Twitter, how long Musk tends to maintain those limits and to question Elon's justifications. Despite the fact that there's a new CEO bailing water out of the boiler room, Twitter doesn't appear to have reconsidered its lack of a comms team - we only received the usual poomoji for our trouble.
Maybe it's time for a new CTO, too
Twitter has faced a lot of problems lately that Twitter CTO and executive chairman Musk, who stepped down as CEO of Twitter when Linda Yaccarino stepped into the role in [7]early June , has blamed almost entirely on [8]the greed of AI companies.
The data that Twitter contains, or so Musk's argues, is invaluable to large language model AIs like ChatGPT and Google Bard, and they should be paying for the right to scrape it.
In addition to imposing [9]wildly expensive prices on Twitter's data APIs, the Twitter tech lead also decided last week to block all users not signed in to Twitter from viewing any posts whatsoever, inadvertently killing tweet embeds in other apps. This, Musk [10]claimed on Friday, would also be temporary.
[11]
"Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping," Musk said. "It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup's outrageous valuation."
As with all things Twitter and Musk related, the truth of the matter is trickier to sort out.
Take, for example, the fact that Twitter under Musk has made a [12]habit [13]of [14]not [15]paying [16]its [17]bills in order to save money and [18]attempt to break even. That arguably unwise move hasn't been confined to bonuses, legal fees and suppliers - Twitter has reportedly been stiffing Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, which host much of its infrastructure, too.
[19]
Twitter reportedly owed AWS as much as [20]$70 million (£55m) as far back as March, which led Amazon to threaten to withhold advertising payments due to the bird site. Twitter's reported $200-$300 million yearly contract with Google Cloud has also been going unpaid. Yaccarino [21]reportedly renegotiated a start to those payments in late June, mere days before Twitter's contract with Google Cloud was due to expire on June 30 - the day before the rate limits were enacted.
[22]Elon Musk's Twitter moves were 'reaffirming' says Reddit boss amid API changes
[23]Yaccarino takes wheel at Twitter early as advertising woes become public
[24]Reddit: If you want to slurp our API to train that LLM, you better pay for it, pal
[25]US authorities warn on China's new counter-espionage law
We've contacted Google and Amazon to get some insight into the state of their respective relationships with Twitter and whether they've cut off access to Twitter bits hosted in their clouds, but haven't heard back from either.
If it isn't the unpaid bills catching up to Twitter, bad coding may be the cause. A number of people claim to have found evidence that, since blocking Twitter access to anyone not signed in, Twitter's front end appears to be DDoS'ing its back-end.
Developer Sheldon Chang pointed out as much in a [26]post to Mastodon over the weekend, complete with video capture of Chrome's developer tools showing a wall of failed get requests. Chang said the Twitter web app was "firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives," which he said is likely creating "hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned."
The problem is even worse on Tweetdeck, [27]according to Molly White, who posted similar video of Chrome's dev tools littered with 404 warnings as Tweetdeck tried to retrieve content that would normally be available to Twitter visitors that aren't logged in.
That's surely a good reason to impose rate limits, but like the unpaid bills, it's unclear whether Twitter's move is also the reason behind the weekend's chaos. We asked that question too, and will have to hope Yaccarino decides to reverse course on another [28]Musk decision . ®
Get our [29]Tech Resources
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675187969420828672
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZKNE-VIkuHbgIaGndRPurQAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754
[4] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675260424109928449
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZKNE-VIkuHbgIaGndRPurQAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZKNE-VIkuHbgIaGndRPurQAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/05/yaccarino_takes_twitter_helm_early/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/reddit_charging_ai_api/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/19/reddit_ceo_musk_twitter/
[10] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZKNE-VIkuHbgIaGndRPurQAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/24/monarchy_chasing_twitter_rent/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/23/twitter_consultant_lawsuit/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/31/twitter_market_square_lawsuit/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/05/more_twitter_lawsuits/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/18/twitter_staff_sue_musk/
[17] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/07/03/twitter-faces-lawsuit-over-unpaid-office-fees-again/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/twitter_value_decline/
[19] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZKNE-VIkuHbgIaGndRPurQAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[20] https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2023/03/08/twitter-owes-amazon-at-least-70-millionamazon-delays-hq2-second-phase-construction/
[21] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-21/twitter-resumes-paying-google-cloud-patching-up-relationship
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/19/reddit_ceo_musk_twitter/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/05/yaccarino_takes_twitter_helm_early/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/reddit_charging_ai_api/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/china_espionage_law_update_warning/
[26] https://elk.zone/mstdn.social/@sysop408@sfba.social/110639436130532372
[27] https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1675544063662014466
[28] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1637420728743088130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[29] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
A few weeks ago he said Twitter was now only worth half what he paid for it. With this weekend's screw-up, is there any value left in the kitty? I mean, a site that makes money from people seeing its content restricts its users ability to see content can't be worth much now, can it?
Sound like another case of him trying to save a few $ by rate limiting for him to not understand how the Twitter site works and that it might end up costing more in the long run.
Social media relies on engagement and if people get to their allotted 600 tweets viewed, I doubt they will all be rushing to pay for a subscription to see more, more likely they will just open another app such as Instagram and carry on doom scrolling on there, so Zuckerberg will be getting more ad views and therefore revenue and not Twitter.
Sound like another case of him trying to save a few $ by rate limiting for him to not understand how the Twitter site works and that it might end up costing more in the long run.
Social media relies on engagement..
.. And social conditioning relies on disengagement. I'm kinda curious how many Twitterati will actually hit their quotas, and if they do, should perhaps consider their life choices. But in the wider world of politics, governments are looking for ways to censor 'social' media. We've seen this already with accounts being cancelled for offending TPTB by not blindly following various narratives, or expressing unpopular views. Assorted AI and 'fact checkers' are hoping to make big money providing censorship tools, and have been training their bots using Twitter & Facebook content. If bot herders are making money, or weaponising Twitter, doesn't some countermeasure seem reasonable?
CEO of Twitter ... Linda Yaccarino
I'm sure the section of her CV where she recounts her tenure at Twitter will be fascinating future reading.
Re: CEO of Twitter ... Linda Yaccarino
I'm sure that period of time will be called "Undergoing rehabilitation."
Re: CEO of Twitter ... Linda Yaccarino
In the future, everyone will be Twiter CEO for 15 minutes.
Public speaking anxiety
The only reason the Fail Whale hired Linda Yaccarino is so he himself doesn't have to appear in front of the European Parliament or US Congress whenever Twitter has royally screwed up again and the CEO is summoned to explain themselves.
It is utterly crap
I am being punished in the new regime because I have a quick brain. I keep being put in the bot cage for liking tweets ‘too quickly’. No matter what stratagems I use to slow it down, to attempt to measure the time (highly variable) etc have come cropper of the capricious new rules. Anything seems to be the rule. I am currently in the bot cage for the fourth time today. Yesterday I spent most of the day in it from the first ‘infringement’.
The whole thing is both arbitrary and capricious. You are given no time limit for your punishment and no notification for when it has ended.
I have seen a suggestion this is actually because Musk has extended his ‘get paid only if you sue us’ attitude to office rent to paying for hosting, server farms etc. So Twitter itself is being rate limited in response.
Advertisers need to know there are fewer eyes on twitter as we are all serving time outs.
Re: It is utterly crap
Ah diddums.
I found I could not see Twitter posts due to the need to sign in. So I have not.
Did I miss anything? Thought not...
I presume now the BBC et al will stop posting Twitter on their site as it is not generally viewable? Death march continues...
Agreed, I lurked without logging in having several people’s twitter pages open for some time before taking the plunge myself in reaction to one fo them getting egregiously banned by the gender borg lying. If you cannot see what it’s like why would you join it?
Additionally, Perhaps El Reg could consider not filling an article about how Twitter is difficult to access with endless links to Twitter. Duh!
Here's a hint for news websites, it's possible to link to and embed Mastodon posts and it actually works unlike Musk's $44bn albatross!
But I do think websites should continue embedding tweets, every page with an embedded tweet is contributing to DDOSing Twitter.
I used to lurk reading the tweets of a couple of people I know. Now I can't. Nor can anybody else that isn't actively on Twitter.
I wonder how long until people come up on tweeting stuff on that site. There are other, less actively hostile, alternatives.
Two years from now
@elonmusk Should I step down as Chief Janitorial Officer of Twitter?
Quick Review
1. Twitter gets its contents at no charge from its posters.
2. Twitter re-sells that content via advertisement views.
3. Twitter sells subscriptions.
4. Twitter fails to honor its financial obligations to other companies.
5. Twitter (or, at least, Mr. Musk) is unhappy that some other people and companies are obtaining the content which was given gratis to Twitter.
My empathy for Twitter's "problem" is best expressed in femto-give-a-shits.
He chose the nuclear option
I said back when he started breaking things that the line in the sand for when Twitter would enter a death spiral would be when it is no longer possible to see tweets without being logged in. As of a couple days ago, that's now the case.
That means no more ability to click on Twitter content/link on a page and be taken to the full tweet including replies, unless you login. Since most people don't have a Twitter account, and aren't likely to sign up just to view tweets, that makes Twitter less relevant to the world today than it was last week.
It is also breaking a lot of existing web pages - if you had previously embedded a tweet that contained media like a picture or video that's now gone. A logged in user could click on it to see that, but for most people it will just look like a partially broken link and they'll ignore it. I'm not even sure it is still possible to embed tweets anymore...if it is you'd have to be logged in to do so, which adds another hassle and between that and most of your readership being unable/unwilling to view the full tweet I imagine the number of embedded tweets in newly published pages / newly written posts going forward will take a serious dive. Again making Twitter less relevant.
I guess there is a reason Bluesky reported record activity this past weekend, and had to suspend new signups to keep from falling over - and that's despite it still being invitation only. Hopefully they can get the resources to go all-in and allow open signups. Twitter's activity will drop off a cliff once Bluesky is fully ready, and Musk will be 100% solely to blame.
firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives
Brilliant stuff, Mr CTO, He hasn't realised that a cloud hosted website, where you pay per processor cycle, will actually use more processor cycles determining whether or not someone is logged in or not and serving up 404 page not found responses hundreds of times, than actually just serving up the requested content once.
But if he's getting miserly with his cloud processor cycles, it must mean that the advertising revenue has gone completely down the pan, because any cloud hosted website usually uses ads to finance that quite easily.
This is quite beside the fact that a "pay to read" site requires very good content to get people to pay, and shutting people out is going to reduce the amount of content available, further reducing the number of advertising and subscriptions they will get. Call it the twitter death spiral.
NYT Bestselling Book Title
“Blue Bird In the Emerald Mine: It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup's outrageous valuation."
The whole quote is going to be the subtitle. That statement is, without a doubt, the most out of touch thing I’ve ever heard a tech leader say.
Subscriptions of Blue
Twitter Blue
Viagra (Blue pill, as probably advertised on Twitter)
Hey Elon
Hey Elon – here's an idea for your next poll: 'Should donate all my money and worldly goods to good causes and go and join a silent religious order?'