Mr Musk, who took over Twitter in October after buying it for 44 billion dollars (£35.5 billion), declared on Saturday that verified accounts are being limited to reading 6,000 posts a day.
Unverified accounts can only read 600 posts a day, with new unverified accounts limited to just 300 per day, he said – though he later added: “Rate limits increasing soon to 8,000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.”
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.
But the move sparked a scathing response from many users, including Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst, who told the PA news agency: “Never have I seen a social network try so hard to put people off using a platform and to completely curtail any potential future for its business.”
And Adam Leon Smith, of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT – the UK’s professional body for IT, said it is “very odd to start rate-limiting the reading of a social network”, as limiting users’ scroll time “will affect advertising revenue”.
Mr Musk has not said when exactly the limits will increase, or how long the restrictions will be in place for.
In the UK, thousands of people complained of problems accessing the site from 12pm onwards on Saturday.
