Twitter's apps are breaking following Elon Musk's decision to cap tweet rates

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Over the last few days, Twitter not only stopped showing tweets unless you're logged in, but also started capping the number of tweets users can read each day ("rate limiting&quot — ostensibly due to "data scraping," according to Elon Musk. Those actions are starting to have an impact elsewhere across Twitter's ecosystem, with many users reporting that Tweetdeck (a power-user version of Twitter) no longer works. In addition, Google Search is reportedly showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs due to the logged-in requirement, Search Engine Roundtable reported.

For a lot of users (including Engadget), Tweetdeck effectively stopped functioning, just showing a spinning wheel above most columns. That may be because a bug in Twitter's web app is sending requests in an infinite loop, effectively creating a "self-DDOS" (distributed denial of service), Waxy reported. As researcher Molly White tweeted, that effect is multiplied in Tweetdeck for anything other than the "Home" column, as it keeps "repeatedly retrying 404s," she wrote.

Link to tweet

It's possible to at least get your columns to show up by using a new beta version of Tweetdeck, as Engadget's Matt Brian tweeted. However, those columns are still subject to the rate limits (800 tweets for non-Twitter Blue subscribers), and so most users will stop seeing new tweets shortly after Tweetdeck loads.

On top of that, Google Search may be showing up to 50 percent fewer Twitter URLs following Musk's move to block unregistered users. Using the site command, Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz found that Google now has about 52 percent fewer Twitter URLs in its index than it did on Friday. It's still showing recent tweets in the Search carousel, but normal indexing seems to be broken at the moment. "Not that a site command is the best measure, but... Twitter is down [around] 162 million indexed pages so far since this change," Schwartz tweeted.

https://www.engadget.com/twitters-apps-are-breaking-following-elon-musks-decision-to-cap-tweet-rates-125028807.html

Heckuva job Eloon.

[tanyev]

1. *snort*

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Serious question: does this Twitter thing add any value to anyone's lives? Or serve a purpose?

[brooklynite]

4. Serious answer: yes.

There are responsible and informed voices who are largely choosing to stay on Twitter rather than migrate to one of the marginal substitutes, and its excellent for quick information on breaking stories.

[Emrys]

6. Another serious answer:

Yes, for some people it can be literally life or death.

Rightly or wrongly, Twitter has a vital public service role in helping to respond to physical emergencies, from wildfire alerts to storm and adverse weather and other environmental threat warnings to people dealing with severe immediate oppression at the hands of their governments or adversaries.

It's easy to sit in the comfort of armchair lives not at the moment facing those challenges and disparage it. Among all the crap, which can fairly easily be filtered out for most of us, Twitter is so intrinsic to many lives that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. As it is, it developed organically from myriad people's efforts over many years.

It's a shame that Musk is incapable of realizing that or respecting it. It's also a shame that those who barely or never use it, often very vocally, fail to understand its importance.

[CurtEastPoint]

11. thank you for thoughtful replies.

[JCMach1]

9. Not any more, it is just propping up Musk's destruction of the platform...

People and places need to deplatform Twitter, ASAP

[Iggo]

13. Imagine spending forty billion dollars just to break someone else's toy.

[ecstatic]

10. It used to. I remember being jolted awake one night

and then I felt what seemed like a spasm of my entire house. With it being in the middle of the night, I wondered if maybe it was a dream or what, but I was like, no, this is real. So I googled earthquake. Nothing. Then Twitter results started coming in and confirmed that yes, I had experienced a mini quake (aftershock??) at 4am or so in Atlanta of all places. Most of my friends/ family slept through the entire thing. lol.

Of course, those days are gone because eloon is so g'damn cheap and constantly cutting off his own nose to spite his face. lol.

[Carlitos Brigante]

3. Now this, puts a smile on my face. The only sad part of this whole fiasco is the

continued job losses.

[Renew Deal]

5. Not sure how a business that runs on advertising makes money when there are fewer eyeballs.

[TheRealNorth]

7. When you have as much money as Musk.....

Plowing a business into the ground is a small price to pay to sate your ego. Plus, I suspect he is getting money from other places to "adjust" the algorithms.

[B.See]

8. A Putin supporter/apologist who thinks people without children shouldn't have the right to vote?

In control of the dominant world wide source of information? Er, no thank you. All I know is I'm thankful I'VE never depended on it.

Elon Musk supports eliminating voting rights for people without children

[StarryNite]

12. Twitter is in the shitter.