Twitter puts 'temporary' cap on number of tweets users can read a day

Twitter also no longer lets users access tweets, user profiles, or comments on the web unless they were logged in to an account

Twitter owner Elon Musk has said that the social media company has put a "temporary" limit on the number of tweets users can read on a daily basis, in a bid to address "extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation".

Twitter Blue subscribers (or verified users) are limited to reading 6,000 posts per day while people who have not signed up for the service (or unverified users) are limited to reading 600 posts per day. New unverified accounts will be limited to read 300 tweets per day, Musk said in a tweet.

These limits will be "increasing soon" to 8,000 posts per day for verified users, 800 for unverified users, and 400 for new unverified users, Musk said in a subsequent tweet.

A screenshot of Elon Musk's tweet announcing new user limits on Twitter

The tech billionaire disclosed these curbs after several thousand users across the world complained about multiple site issues they were facing on the platform on July 1. Many of them were seeing error messages that said "rate limit exceeded" or "cannot retrieve tweets" on the platform.

The development also comes on the heels of Twitter no longer letting users access tweets, user profiles, or comments on the web unless they were logged in to an account. These users were instead being redirected to Twitter's sign in page.

Musk, however, termed the move as a "temporary emergency measure". "We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users" he said in a tweet on July 1.

Note: The story has been updated with Elon Musk's announcement to increase user limits.