Twitter CEO Elon Musk 
News

‘RIP Twitter’ trends as users mock Elon Musk’s decision to limit number of tweets viewed

Amid backlash and doomsaying over Elon Musk’s decision to temporarily limit reading of tweets, former Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said that running Twitter is “hard”.

Written by : TNM Staff

With Twitter owner Elon Musk announcing a temporary limit on the number of tweets users are allowed to read in a day, the social media platform faced a wave of mockery in the form of memes and trending hashtags such as #RIPTwitter and #GoodbyeTwitter. Announcing the decision on Saturday, July 1, Musk justified it by stating that it was meant to address “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation” on the website. He claimed that excessive data scraping was adversely impacting the platform’s performance for regular users. Unverified accounts on Twitter can now only view up to 1,000 posts in a day.

As Twitter users learned of the viewing restrictions, many of them expressed their discontent through memes, suggesting that Musk’s decision was arbitrary and would drive users away from Twitter if the reading limit continues. Some users also suggested that this was a way for Musk to force users to pay for the Twitter Blue subscription. Amid the backlash, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reacted to the development and said that running Twitter was “hard.”

Dorsey, who has previously criticised Musk’s leadership at Twitter on a few occasions, wrote: “Running Twitter is hard. I don’t wish that stress upon anyone. I trust that the team is doing their best under the constraints they have, which are immense. It’s easy to critique the decisions from afar…which I’m guilty of…but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will,” Jack tweeted. He went on to say, “And I do hope they consider building on truly censorship-resistant open protocols like bitcoin and nostr to help ease that burden. Good for all, and critical to preserve the open internet.”

While Musk initially announced a viewing limit of 600 posts for unverified users, he later announced that they would be increased to 800 and then 1,000. Some users saw this as an attempt to deal with the backlash by users threatening to leave Twitter for other social media platforms. Other users meanwhile began to share strategies for making the most of the limited access to Twitter. 

Sign up to get Daily Wrap in your inbox

* indicates required