Twitter users across the world reported difficulties and delays on Saturday, with thousands of users being unable to use the social media platform.
After users started reporting issues, the website’s billionaire owner Elon Musk tweeted that temporary limits had been put in place “to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.”
He claimed that verified accounts are only allowed to read 6,000 posts per day while unverified ones are only allowed to read 600. At 300 posts each day, new unverified accounts are created.
Meanwhile, people have been speculating if the site has done so due to not paying the bills to renew its multi-year contract with Google Cloud.
As its contract is up for renewal in June, Twitter has declined to pay its Google Cloud payments, which, according to a report from last month, could cripple the trust and safety teams at the social media platform.
According to the report, Twitter and Google inked a multi-year pact regarding, among other things, combatting spam and securing accounts, before Elon Musk took control of the social media network last year.
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However, later in the month, Twitter has started paying again for Google Cloud’s services. Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, reportedly had a role in repairing the relationship. The two businesses are also negotiating a more extensive partnership as part of the talks, which have included conversations between Yaccarino and Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, according to reports.
So currently it is unclear if the decision taken by Elon Musk was motivated by events that took place between Twitter and Google in the past month.
