Twitter to restrict number of tweets people can read each day

Owner Elon Musk encouraged users to 'step away from the phone'

Users around the world reported problems with Twitter on Saturday. Reuters

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter is temporarily limiting the number of tweets people can read in a day, as thousands of users reported problems getting to the website.

Verified accounts were initially limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, Mr Musk said, adding that unverified accounts will be limited to 600 posts a day with new unverified accounts limited to 300.

The temporary reading limitation was later increased to 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts per day for unverified and 500 posts per day for new unverified users, Mr Musk said in a separate post without providing further details.

Earlier, users attempting to view feeds were met with the message: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”

Mr Musk, who took over Twitter in October after buying it for $44 billion, appeared to address the change in a Tweet on Sunday in which he encouraged users to "step away from the phone to see your friends & family".

He had previously said the company had been forced to take action because of continuing “data manipulation”.

He said that many users would temporarily have the number of tweets they could see reduced, particularly for new unverified accounts.

In the UK, a peak of 5,126 people complained of problems accessing the site at 4.12pm on Saturday, according to the website Downdetector, which tracks losses of online services.

In the US, about 7,461 people complained of issues as of 4.15pm UK time, the site said.

#Twitterdown and #RIPTwitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying “Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again.”

Twitter has made a number of significant updates to its website and app under its new ownership.

In the latest, on Friday Twitter released an update intended to block anyone who is neither registered nor logged in to its platform from viewing tweets.

However, a day later, even those who are already logged in were reporting that they could not see other people’s account.

After taking over Twitter, Mr Musk laid off some 80 per cent of its 8,000 global staff – and admitted it resulted in the platform losing a large amount of its functionality.

In December, just weeks after the takeover, Mr Musk tweeted: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.”

The pledge came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in a poll Mr Musk created and promised to abide by.

In May, Mr Musk confirmed that advertising executive Linda Yaccarino was joining from NBCUniversal to become Twitter’s chief executive.