Twitter has put limits on all users restricting the amount of content they are able to read, Elon Musk announced on Saturday. Users across the UK thought Twitter had gone down when they started getting 'limit' messages at midday on Saturday.
But the new Twitter owner has announced a restriction on use of the site because of 'data scraping and system manipulation'.
Mr Musk, who took over Twitter in October after buying it for 44 billion dollars (£35.5 billion), announced 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.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.
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 online outages.
In the US, some 7,461 people complained of issues as of 4.15pm UK time, the site notes.
#Twitterdown and RIP Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying “Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again”.
