Musk's Twitter Revolution: The Saga Continues

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has been nothing short of dramatic, with the tech billionaire implementing a series of radical changes, not all of which have been well received. The latest development, announced on July 1st, is a limit on the number of posts that users can view in a day. For verified users, the limit is set at 6,000 tweets, 600 for unverified users, and a mere 300 for new, unverified accounts.

In his announcement, Musk didn’t define what constitutes a ‘view’ or a ‘post’. It seems replies count towards the limit, but ads may not. As for ‘viewing’, it could mean simply scrolling past a tweet. Once a user hits their limit, they are greeted with either empty space or a message stating ‘rate limit exceeded’. Musk quickly raised the limits to 10,000 for verified and 1,000 for unverified users, but the new rules have still significantly impaired the user experience.

Musk justifies these changes as necessary to combat "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation". However, speculation suggests that there might be other reasons. Some point to Musk's decision to stop paying for several services previously used by Twitter, including Google’s cloud hosting services. This decision reportedly led to a strained relationship between Musk and Google, possibly contributing to Twitter's current instability.

Web developer and Twitter user Sheldon Chang offers another explanation. According to Chang, Twitter is essentially DDOSing itself. He noted that while the Twitter home feed wasn’t loading properly, Twitter was still firing off non-stop requests for data that never arrived, causing instability. Chang attributes this to Musk’s latest change, which requires users to log in before they can view any content on Twitter.

In conclusion, it's clear that Musk's tenure at Twitter has been controversial. The recent changes have created a significant disruption for users and have raised many questions about the future of the platform. Whether these changes will ultimately be beneficial or detrimental is yet to be seen. What is certain, though, is that under Musk's leadership, Twitter is nothing like it was before.