does elon not realise he needs tweets to be more visible not less https://t.co/Rovv5njQ8V
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) June 30, 2023
If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you’ll be unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll meet a Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user.
Twitter didn’t immediately make a public announcement, making it unclear if this was an intentional update or another technical mishap. Later on Friday, however, Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted, claiming in a reply that the change is a “Temporary emergency measure,” blaming “data pillaging” for degrading the service for all users…
… Mashable recently reported that even people who pay the steep new rate for API access say they’ve seen unannounced changes, bugs, and no customer support. From the outside, we don’t know if that’s because of the scrapers Musk notes or his own attempts to cut costs that included layoffs within the teams that help keep Twitter’s servers running and reportedly leaving a Google Cloud bill unpaid for months before recently resuming payments, according to Bloomberg…
The move manages to both contradict and support other actions that owner Elon Musk has taken in the past year. In 2022, Musk hired noted iPhone hacker George Hotz to fix its search feature and get rid of the login prompt that prevents unregistered users from browsing the website. Hotz resigned less than halfway through his 12-week internship with the company, claiming he “didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.” In April this year, Twitter then eliminated the platform’s search feature for unregistered users entirely.
Free Twitter account holders can still access publicly posted tweets and other information, though many of the features that enhance user experiences (such as editing tweets and user verification) are locked behind a Twitter Blue subscription, and more of the platform’s core features could soon follow. The company could probably use the cash injection from users paying for premium features — Twitter’s US advertising revenue between April and May this year plummeted by 59 percent compared to the previous year.
If you are an unverified Twitter user, this counts as one of the 600 posts that you get to read on the website today. https://t.co/i91fHl6lkU
— Variety (@Variety) July 1, 2023
[User query: If you are not registered on Twitter, can you tell me if you can still go directly to the Variety article by clicking on the variety.com line in the embedded tweet right above this?]