A couple years ago, I was working along with a Sentdex Video on Twitter Sentiment Analysis(https://lnkd.in/gKuNDXsu). Twitter was a common resource to visit to get large amounts of text data, in a relatively simple and sophisticated manner. The website was running for over a decade at this point, and as such, had an enormous corpus of text, organized and readily available. It was any nlp programmer’s dream.
These past few days, Elon has imposed a rate limit on viewing Tweets. After a strict limit in which “ -Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day – Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day – New unverified accounts to 300/day” (https://lnkd.in/gY_JecDm), Elon has made it slightly more lax to 10,000, 1,000, and 500. His stated reason for doing so is to limit the data scraping that is ever-prevalent in modern day ai. As Elon stated, “It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation.”This decision has had a significant impact on both users and startups.
These changes cause not just pain to Tech Startups, but they hurt Twitter’s user count as well. These users now shift to competitors like BlueSky and Mastedon. BlueSky CEO, Jack Dorsey, stated that the site saw “record high traffic”, and Mastedon’s user count rose by over 110,000.
Even after these changes, Twitter by far still remains the dominent force in its particular niche. The site has had a long history, and has risen to supremacy by not just luck, but wise decisions by its owners. After the shift to Elon, I remain hopeful for the site.
