The social network bought in October 2022 by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, imposed restrictions on the number of posts that users can see. This move caused an increase in the number of fans of the rival German platform Mastodon, which is characterized by a decentralized structure controlled by the users themselves, and in a single day they added 110 thousand fans. The CEO of this German network, Eugn Rochko, said that it is not bad. The Bluesky network, which was launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, also saw an increase in the number of users.
The move by Twitter comes after Musk expressed opposition to artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI for using Twitter data to train their models. Mastodon has similar characteristics to Twitter, but instead of being controlled by one company, it is installed on thousands of computer servers. In addition, Musk also expressed frustration at having to commit significant resources to meet AI startups' excessive demands for data, which affects their valuation. In this way, Twitter manages to limit the number of possible data from which the artificial intelligence could learn and also the possible manipulation of the system.
Originally, the number of read posts allowed was set at 6,000 posts per day, while unverified accounts were limited to 600 posts and new unverified accounts to 300. However, Musk later temporarily increased the read limits to 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts for unverified users and 500 posts per day for new unverified users. The temporary emergency measure also includes the fact that unregistered Internet users cannot see any posts on Twitter. These restrictions have a particularly negative impact on accounts managed by news agencies, journalists and monitoring services, which rely heavily on reviewing the volume of tweets on a daily basis. On his own network, Musk could see posts with the hashtag #TwitterDown" or the captions "RIP Twitter", which shows the same level of concern among users. Currently, the social network Twitter is his personal property, it is not publicly traded in shares, but such restrictions cause new users to prefer registrations on an alternative platform and its value may drop significantly.[1] We will have to wait for a longer-term solution that would prevent companies from using data from Twitter and at the same time meet the convenience of users.
[1] Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and current expectations, which may be inaccurate, or based on the current economic environment which is subject to change. Such statements are not guaranteeing of future performance. They involve risks and other uncertainties which are difficult to predict. Results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements.
