Twitter users were left baffled as to why they were unable to post to the social media platform last night, after a bug linked to limitations on user activity emerged.
Users last night (February 8) began reporting that they were receiving 'rate limit exceeded' messages when trying to Tweet, meaning that they had went above and beyond the number of posts or accounts followed within a strict time frame.
Elon Musk's company says that is had introduced said limitations to ease the strain on the site, in a bid to help it run in a smoother and more efficient fashion.
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But a number of users reported receiving the message as of last night despite not reaching the threshold that the social media platform has set for activity. Similar restrictions have also traditionally been installed in the past to protect against spam campaigns - as well as to prevent inauthentic accounts from tweeting messages and trying to spam follow relentlessly.
But a page on Twitter's help centre shows that Twitter is now introducing barrier limits for all users - in a bid to 'alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter and reduce downtime and error pages'.
According to the page, accounts will be limited to sending a total of 500 DMs (direct messages) per day, sending 2,400 tweets a day, and following 400 new accounts each day. The limit is also 'further broken down in semi-hourly intervals' which is believed to have potentially caused the issue for a number of users who recently received the 'rate limit' message.
Accounts will now also only be able to follow 5,000 accounts in total - with further following attempts afterwards being 'limited by account-specific ratios'.
Since his Twitter takeover in October, experts have questioned the ability of Elon and his skeleton staffing in certain departments to keep the widely-used platform afloat. Musk himself has deflected such scrutiny, but the new restrictions open up criticisms to the platform's ability to handle excessive traffic rates.
The help page also says the new set boundaries 'may be temporarily reduced during periods of heavy site usage'.
Are you facing Twitter problems this week? Let us know in the comments.
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