I found an explanation of this on twitter which sounds reasonable and maybe explains the vagary. I don't know, but I'll just paste here anyways:
Twitter's rate limiting is not what everyone is thinking it is. It is not to punish non-paying users.
"Data scraping" is a big deal. This is where automated systems load the website or app and pull your tweets/data. It's a huge security issue. Automated systems are pulling every tweet/word/user account information to store in an unknown database somewhere else.
This could be state actors like China, the US Government, Australia, or other bad political actors like PAC's that are trying to gain access to everyone's information to analyze and use for nefarious things. Manipulating what is said on the site can be done at scale with data scrapping.
It could also be used to figure out the identity of Anons or to punish people in their country for what they tweet. Looking at you #Australia and #Canada and #UnitedKingdom
The temporary measures of limiting tweets is to protect users just as much as it is to protect the entire Twitter network from going down. They are currently scrambling to get ahead of this and tune their network security to block it from happening again.
It's also important to note that twitter has 500,000+ servers. That's not free. In cloud data centers, the companies that use them have to pay for what is called "ingress and egress" of data going "in and out" of the servers. A data scrapping event that is large enough for them to start limiting means that it was a MASSIVE event that could be considered an attack on the site.
[interupting the quote to point out a massive spike in TOR clients in various European countries recently, could be related:
It would also put massive load on their servers and cost them so much money it could threaten the site's financial ability to keep running. It could be on purpose to put twitter out of business from cost alone.
Many people are misunderstanding why @elonmusk
wants people to pay for twitter or for the twitter API (a programming interface that can pull data for other sites and apps).
The reason he wants people to pay is because if China or porn companies want to create massive bot farms of fake accounts, it is currently free. These bad actors are highly skilled and operate like a business. They have professional staff that continuously change their tactics and Twitter engineers have to fight 24/7 to stay ahead of them. If they have to pay for every account or pay to use the API, it would cost them A LOT of money. This limits the amount of people who could create bots, put automated porn on here, and the hacking/scrapping/DDOS attacks on the site. It protects you.
It also guarantees twitter will continue to exist without bloating it with tons of ads. This is all a part of the plan to create a free-speech place we can enjoy without being controlled by outside actors or advertising companies. I know $8 is a lot to some people but, it is for many reasons. None of the reasons are to hurt or punish people.
First: They will dictate HOW MANY tweets that you can see.
Second: They will dictate WHAT tweet you can see.
Third: They will create algorithims for each individual based on race, religeon, geographical location, social credit score, ect. that way everyone is seeing something completley different. Fourth: They create thought-crime infrustructure. Fith: They direct un-desirables to un-desirable content. Sixth: You get thrown in jail for reading said tweet that THEY directed you to. ENJOY!
The Twatter platform is massively parallel and scaleable. Once traffic increases the current server load max, they can just spawn new servers and load balancer takes care of distributing the load.
The guy is worth whatever billions of funny money.
All that excuse of "Twitter being hammered" is just a smokescreen.
He's just playing games :
force you to register
entice you to pay
prove to advertisers he can shake off "bot accounts"
show the addicted how much they really need Twatter, by temporarily taking away their candy
etc
Don't fall for it.
Just use telegram/element/gab/gettr/mastodon instances/whatever.
There's a strange disconnect with reality on the part of almost everyone I see commenting on this particular issue, and with Twitter and Elon in general. That is, they've already decided who is "good" and who is "bad" and then just come up with some argumentation that appears to fit it. Done and dusted.
But I mean, if we all back up a step, people seem to be desperately worried about the tyrannical forces of a man running an Internet service. The most pertinent aspects here, though, are that the service can generally be used for free (or at a moderate cost that isn't changing anyone's lifestyle), and you can simply decline to participate or even access it any time.
Many would define freedom most simply as "the right to be left alone". Well, everyone's free to leave Twitter and all of Elon's other doings alone at any time. Nor are any of them going to come knocking at anyone's door. But somehow all these doings are--in some Escher-esque way--perceived as clear and present dangers to freedom.
It's all bizarre, is it not? Everyone seems to have a dog in the fight, but no one seems to have bothered keeping track of what the fight is about.
The one big problem with Twitter previously was that it was used as a tool of cognitive warfare to shape public perception. Bans, shadowbans, "algos" of various types, bots and shills, etc., were all used to make "public opinion" appear other than it was, and thus to shape it in reality.
That's mostly gone away. No one bothers talking about it any more. That's a sure sign the Elites just took a big "L". Whenever that happens, They never talk about the subject again and it slides by itself down the memory hole.
See how that in itself has an impact on the public perception? Are we all starting to see how this works? I know I'm trying, but I always wonder to what extent other people are doing the same.
I found an explanation of this on twitter which sounds reasonable and maybe explains the vagary. I don't know, but I'll just paste here anyways:
[interupting the quote to point out a massive spike in TOR clients in various European countries recently, could be related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36560136]
Here's the users twitter profile:
https://twitter.com/misteryrobozo
That's as good as explanation as any.
I posted elsewhere the FT article on the new Twitter-WEF-CEO who wants of course to monetize the twitter content for ads.
You can't do that, if everybody scrapes it for free.
You gotta make it exclusive first.
If non-regged users are punished by doing this move, so be it, they will become regged users at some conversion rate.
This is about money and a step on the path to Musk's wet-dream The X App, which is modelled after the WEF-trained Allen Zhang's WeChat.
The countries and apps are different, the goal is the same: one App to rule them all in darkness to enslave them...
First: They will dictate HOW MANY tweets that you can see. Second: They will dictate WHAT tweet you can see. Third: They will create algorithims for each individual based on race, religeon, geographical location, social credit score, ect. that way everyone is seeing something completley different. Fourth: They create thought-crime infrustructure. Fith: They direct un-desirables to un-desirable content. Sixth: You get thrown in jail for reading said tweet that THEY directed you to. ENJOY!
As usual Elon is lying.
The Twatter platform is massively parallel and scaleable. Once traffic increases the current server load max, they can just spawn new servers and load balancer takes care of distributing the load.
The guy is worth whatever billions of funny money.
All that excuse of "Twitter being hammered" is just a smokescreen.
He's just playing games :
Don't fall for it.
Just use telegram/element/gab/gettr/mastodon instances/whatever.
There's a strange disconnect with reality on the part of almost everyone I see commenting on this particular issue, and with Twitter and Elon in general. That is, they've already decided who is "good" and who is "bad" and then just come up with some argumentation that appears to fit it. Done and dusted.
But I mean, if we all back up a step, people seem to be desperately worried about the tyrannical forces of a man running an Internet service. The most pertinent aspects here, though, are that the service can generally be used for free (or at a moderate cost that isn't changing anyone's lifestyle), and you can simply decline to participate or even access it any time.
Many would define freedom most simply as "the right to be left alone". Well, everyone's free to leave Twitter and all of Elon's other doings alone at any time. Nor are any of them going to come knocking at anyone's door. But somehow all these doings are--in some Escher-esque way--perceived as clear and present dangers to freedom.
It's all bizarre, is it not? Everyone seems to have a dog in the fight, but no one seems to have bothered keeping track of what the fight is about.
The one big problem with Twitter previously was that it was used as a tool of cognitive warfare to shape public perception. Bans, shadowbans, "algos" of various types, bots and shills, etc., were all used to make "public opinion" appear other than it was, and thus to shape it in reality.
That's mostly gone away. No one bothers talking about it any more. That's a sure sign the Elites just took a big "L". Whenever that happens, They never talk about the subject again and it slides by itself down the memory hole.
See how that in itself has an impact on the public perception? Are we all starting to see how this works? I know I'm trying, but I always wonder to what extent other people are doing the same.