Elon Musk's crusade against free-loading AI companies continues, even if the original drastic measure by Twitter to limit the number of viewable posts per day has been softened up as practical exigencies assert their hold.
For those who might be unaware, Elon Musk announced toward the beginning of July that verified Twitter accounts would be temporarily limited to viewing 10,000 posts per day, while unverified ones would be limited to viewing just 1,000 posts daily. Initially, the restriction was much more stringent, with verified accounts limited to viewing 6,000 posts per day and unverified ones restricted to just 600 posts.
According to Elon Musk, this move was essential to combat "extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation" by AI companies – a practice that was supposedly affecting the overall user experience at Twitter. Just today, in a pertinent blog post that provided additional insight, Twitter said that the tweet-visibility-limiting move was also essential to "detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors from our platform."
1. Scraping is already disallowed by T&C.
2. The scraping orgs dgaf & mask their IPs through proxy servers or through orgs that appear legit. For example, a recent massive scraping operation originating from Oracle IP addresses was just using their servers as a laundromat.
3.…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2023
Toward the beginning of July, Elon Musk conveyed his intent to sue those companies "who stole our data."
Definitely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2023
Today, the CEO of Tesla reaffirmed his plan to make major AI players pay for Twitter-generated data that was used to train models, as is evident from the above tweet.
UPDATE 2: Looks like when not logged in you can view only the first Tweet of a thread if you have the direct url.
Attempting to do anything else prompts the login screen.
Seems to be a compromise to allow some access to Twitter via direct links while still hindering scrapers. pic.twitter.com/mrhw7yiVFL
— X Daily News (@xDaily) July 5, 2023
In a related development, Twitter has started easing some of the earlier restrictions that were designed to completely eliminate the ability of AI models to siphon off data. In this regard, users can now view the first tweet that is part of a thread without having to log in. This appears to be a compromise between greater access and the need to quench the flow of data to various AI models.
Do you think Elon Musk will succeed in forcing major AI companies to pay for the siphoned-off data from Twitter? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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