There must be some way out here.
Yes, that's what the Joker said to the Thief in Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," but now it seems that many Twitter users have similar feelings.
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"so is everyone quitting twitter now??" one commenter recently asked.
Well, we wouldn't say everybody, but interest in defecting from the microblogging site has reportedly soared after Elon Musk announced temporary daily limits to the number of posts each user can view.
"To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day," Elon's tweet read.
"Bro, wtf is this," one user asked while posting a photo of a tombstone branded with the image of Larry, Twitter's bird mascot.
'Not Feasible' to Use Twitter
The billionaire Tesla (TSLA) CEO and self-described "Chief Twit" said the limits -- 6,000 posts a day for verified accounts and 600 for unverified accounts -- are being applied to address data scraping from AI companies.
They were later lifted to 10,000 and 1,000 respectively following a series of user complaints and outages on various Twitter-linked platforms.
Online interest in the term "Delete Twitter account" skyrocketed 292% in the U.S. and 131% worldwide on July 1 compared with the last seven days, according to a study by CasinoAlpha.
At the same time, the group said, searches for "How to delete Twitter account" soared by 230% and 152% worldwide on July 1 as account holders found out they would be affected. U.S.-based searches for 'Delete Twitter' also rose by 194%.
"I'm not quitting twitter I'm js gonna take time off until I can move on and forget abt all this" one person said.
"My official announcement: I am quitting twitter," another post read. "It has been great developing web3 projects on Twitter, but currently it is not feasible to use Twitter in this way. I'll be back when this is over."
"You all lying about leaving twitter, again?" a poster asked.
“to everyone leaving twitter see you tomorrow on twitter,” another person said.
The site has been losing people ever since Musk carried a sink through the front door in October.
Predicted Losses
Twitter is predicted to lose almost 4% of its users this year and 5% in 2024, meaning over 32 million users will leave the platform, according to an annual decline forecast in December by Insider Intelligence.
“Users will start to leave the platform next year as they grow frustrated with technical issues and the proliferation of hateful or other unsavory content,” principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said.
That hateful or other unsavory content probably shouldn't come as much as a surprise since Musk removed all safeguards limiting the spread of misinformation, racism, antisemitism and hate speech.
However, Enberg also said that it wasn’t “time to write Twitter’s obituary yet,” noting that while the forecast reflects the current volatile conditions at the company, there’s a possibility users will flock back—if the app can figure out its tech and content moderation.
Celebrities have been bailing from Twitter for a while, including such names as Elton John, Whoopi Goldberg, Jim Carrey and Toni Braxton.
Musk's push to convert Twitter's many users into paying customers has also stretched into TweetDeck, with Twitter Support saying July 3 that unverified users will lose access to the feature in 30 days.
Meanwhile, Facebook parent company Meta Platforms (META) is reportedly expected to launch a text-based rival to Twitter, expected to be called Threads, over the coming days.
And there's another reason for Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to have a fight.
