Twitter limits how many posts you can read, Blue users get more than free accounts

Twitter CEO and multi-billionaire Elon Musk took to the social media platform to announce that they will temporarily limit the number of posts users can read per day. Verified users, a.k.a Blue subscribers, can view up to 6,000 tweets daily, while unverified accounts get 600. Newly registered unverified accounts are limited to just 300 tweets a day.

This move hasn't been well accepted by the users. Some have complained the move isn't consistent with what Musk had promised for the platform. Many more have complained that the limits will significantly block access to tons of tweets on the platform, thereby curbing the principles of free speech it has focused on.

Interestingly, Musk recently quoted his original tweet commenting that the limits will soon be bumped to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified, and 400 for new unverified accounts.

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Why is Twitter limiting the number of posts you can read per day?

There can be multiple reasons why the Musk-owned platform is applying limits to the number of posts one can view a day. The CEO says the step is to "address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation." The limits will likely help make the platform a better place for users if the official version is anything to go by.

However, some users have dug up some dirt on Twitter, and the concerns seem alarming. Reportedly, the microblogging website signed a deal with Google to use some cloud features for the platform. The deal reportedly expired on June 30, but Twitter hasn't been able to pay for the features.

The total outstanding is over $1 billion, as per reports. The company is now rushing to take all its assets down from Google Cloud servers before the expiry date, but they don't have enough time. This crisis might have prompted them to limit the number of posts one can view per day.

This official explanation also clarifies why many users complained about the recent Twitter outage a few hours back. In our initial report, we couldn't find a link between the rate limited exceeded error and its official description on the Twitter website. We called it a "server bug."

However, the company seems to be applying limits to all users, not just third-party apps that call the platform's API to deliver its services. Users who exhaust their daily tweet limits will get the "rate limit exceeded" or "cannot retrieve tweets" error.