Tech Tok: Read limit restrictions imposed on Twitter

The big revolution that Executive Chief Elon Musk is planning to bring upon Twitter, somehow always looks like somebody's worse day

First, he fired a bunch of employees. Then came up with the Twitter Blue subscription, monetizing the platform which was free for everyone. And now, he is after users by restricting the number of tweets they can read per day.

The big revolution that Executive Chief Elon Musk is planning to bring upon Twitter, somehow always looks like somebody’s worse day.

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On July 1, Musk in one of his tweets announced a read limit on tweets for users. With this “temporary measure”, he hopes to address the “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.” This comes after he expressed concerns over AI firms taking chunks of data from Twitter to train their software models.

This basically means that users now cannot just doom scroll on the platform. If you want to at least increase the number of tweets you read per day, you simply need to pay. That said, there is still a lot of confusion around who can read how many tweets and where.

The read limit is imposed in three categories – new unverified accounts, unverified accounts, and verified accounts. After publicly changing his heart on the limit a couple of times, Musk finally settled for ten thousand views for verified users, which is the highest limit. Unverified accounts can read up to 1,000, and new unverified accounts up to 500 per day.

Some users said that they were able to still read tweets on the web browser even after their limit on the app was exceeded. Some others said that they didn’t observe any restrictions at all on the web.

This uncertainty over the read limit has clearly proved to be a boon to other platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon. As for Twitter users, they await the next big change.

Meta to launch Twitter rival

Meta which already has popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp is gearing up to launch Twitter’s rival on July 6. Called the Threads, the app is very similar to what Twitter looks like.

It will also be launching at a time when Twitter users are upset about the read limit. The app is available to pre-order on Apple App Store and is said to be linked to Instagram.

However, there are concerns about Threads collecting private information from users, according to Apple privacy labels and media reports.

Jio Bharat phone at Rs 999

Reliance Jio, one of the leading telecom companies in the country has launched a 4G internet-enabled Jio Bharat phone. To be sold at just Rs 999, the company says that through this phone they aim to make India ‘2G-Mukt’ and empower Indians with digital services.

The first beta trial of the phones will begin on July 7 across 6,500 tehsils. The Jio Bharat phone has a 1.77-inch screen, torch, radio, 0.3 MP camera, and 3.5 mm headphone jack. Special mobile plans are also launched specifically for this. For just Rs 123 per month, users can avail unlimited voice calls and a generous 14 GB of data.

– Epsita Gunti with agency inputs