Mildly Infuriating

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).

Image Transcription: Twitter Post:

Elon Musk, @elonmusk

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits

• Verified accounts are limited to reaching 6000 posts/day
• Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
• New unverified accounts to 300/day

^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

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?"

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.

Elon Musk don't make the worst decisions known to man challenge (IMPOSSIBLE) (GONE WRONG)

Social media aim to keep you attached for as long as you can. Twitter does the right opposite

Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It's part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism's status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

The specific moment we're in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn't be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

Twitter and Reddit both dying at the same time was not what I expected in 2023

That man has got to legitimately be one of the stupidest motherfuckers to ever luck his ass into a pile of money.

limiting engagement an app that RELIES ON ENGAGEMENT????? IT CAN'T POSSIBLY GET DUMBER THAN THIS???

The Future

Things like Reddit and Twitter are bad for billionaires. It makes it harder for them to exploit you when there is a public place to talk about their bullshit.

I thought this guy was supposed to be stepping down - didn't he even announce the new CEO?

So with Spez having a hard on for Elon and how he runs Twitter, how long until we see this on Reddit? Premium members can view 1000 posts/day and regular members can only view 100 posts/day. Similar rule will apply to comments too.

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.