Twitter's Public Access Restriction Controversy

About

Twitter's Public Access Restriction Controversy refers to Twitter's controversial decision to temporarily withdraw the capacity to browse the website without making a Twitter account and being logged in (also known as a public profile). News about Twitter's policy requiring a Twitter account to view tweets broke in late June 2023, with various users reacting to the event and speculating about what it means for the future of the platform. Reactions to the news touched on discussions about the perceived enshittification of social media and the internet. Possible unintended consequences of the move include the inability to access archived versions of deleted tweets and the inability to view a tweet by a blocked account on a separate incognito tab. On June 30th, Musk then announced that the new rules about needing an account to view tweets are temporary, with no further dates specified.

Background

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[1] account @disclosetv posted a tweet that read, "JUST IN – Twitter has completely disabled public profiles. To see tweets, you now have to log in to the platform," gathering over 7,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Developments

Twitter View Limit

On July 1st, 2023, Twitter^[7] owner Elon Musk wrote that "to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," Twitter had applied temporary limits to the number of posts users are able to view daily. The change limited the number of posts for verified accounts to 6,000 per day, for unverified accounts to 600 per day and for unverified to 300 per day.

Nitter Discontinuation

During the development of the aforementioned various restrictions, many people switched to the free-to-use front-end website Nitter^[15], created back in 2019, as an alternative method to access Twitter posts, threads and accounts. However, on January 29th, 2024, following Twitter's decision to disable guest accounts, which were an essential part of the front-end mechanism, Nitter's main developer, Zedeus, announced, at first with a laconic message on GitHub^[16], the immediate and definitive discontinuation of the project^[17]; this effectively shut down the only remaining viable alternative to logging in to Twitter.

Online Reactions

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[2] user @TimSweeneyEpic posted a tweet commenting on how he perceives the internet to be increasingly restrictive and "broken," gathering over 10,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). The user received a reply from Elon Musk^[3] in which he said that the move to restrict access to Twitter was undertaken to stop data scraping. The tweet gathered over 14,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Also on June 30th, Twitter^[4] user @uwukko posted a tweet that read, "twitter no longer lets you view tweets without an account. / all archival tools don't work anymore. unauthenticated downloaders/clients/tools/etc also no longer work. / this was probably done to stop unpaid data scraping, but ended up hurting literally everyone else." The post gathered over 14,000 likes in a day (seen below).

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @FireSisterBee posted a tweet that read, "Checking blocked accounts on incognito is over. Sending twitter links over other messenger apps is now over aswell. Just sharing something on twitter with people that don’t have an account because they are mentally stable is over too," gathering over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Also on June 30th, Twitter^[6] user @nearcyan posted a tweet that read, "with the AI scraping wars finally heating up, I expect the web to become less open and usable / more things like reddit forcing their app, twitter blocking users without an account, discord being unindexable / unsure of any good solutions to this atm," gathering over 600 likes in a day (seen below, right).

On July 3rd, Twitter^[14] user @glenngabe noted that Twitter's decision to disable public profiles also led to tweets dropping out of Google search results due to Google's inability to crawl through tweets freely (seen below).

Temporary Measure Announcement

Later on June 30th, 2023, Elon Musk took to his Twitter^[8] to reply to a tweet expressing concern about the change by reassuring them that the measure to limit public profiles was temporary. The tweet reads, "Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!" The post gathered over 15,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Twitter Defaulting on Google Cloud Bill Theory

On June 10th, 2023, Platformer published an article about how Twitter has reportedly failed to pay its Google Cloud services bill and was "scrambling" to move services off Google Cloud before the contract ended on June 30th.^[9] Business Insider^[10] published an article on June 22nd, saying that Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, worked on reconciling Twitter's relationship with Google by restarting bill payments. Various Twitter users noted the timeline of the public profile issue and Twitter's rate limit issue and theorized about how Twitter may have defaulted on its Google Cloud bill.

On July 1st, 2023, Twitter user @oneunderscore__ posted a tweet that read, "Is he broke? This is what broke people do," gathering over 60,000 likes in two days. Twitter^[12] user @torinrozzelle replied to the tweet citing the possibility of Twitter having defaulted on its bills (seen below, left). An earlier June 29th tweet by Twitter user @RMac18 noted that Twitter CEO Yaccarino had purportedly spoken with the head of Google Cloud to resolve the issue (seen below, right).

Search Interest

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External References