Twitter Broke on Saturday and Elon Musk's Solution Might Finally Kill It
By Liam McKeone
Anybody attempting to use Twitter on Saturday ran into an error basically no matter what they tried to do-- a "rate limit exceeded" message that prevented new tweets and replies from loading. It basically made the website unusable and while it did not affect all users it affected enough that the message became a trending topic.
A few hours into the day as this was happening, Elon Musk tweeted out a "solution" while blaming the technical issues on data scraping and platform manipulation.
A little dubious that an outside source is causing the problems on Twitter. The platform has experienced a plethora of technical issues since Musk bought it. This is just another in a long line. And then his solution is to... prevent people from using the website?
CNBC reported on this story and asked Twitter for comment:
Twitter responded to CNBC’s request for comment with its customary poop emoji.
It might finally be it for Twitter. The quality of, well, everything has taken a dive off a very steep cliff since Musk's purchase earlier this year. Average users are bombarded with content they have no interest in thanks to the new pay-to-boost system the blue check marks became, and half the time there's something fundamentally wrong with the website that makes it impossible to work. And now that's happening again with the owner's proposed solution being to limit how much people can use it.
I dunno. We've all made a lot of declarations about Twitter being dead and most of us are still there. Especially in the sports realm, where none of the big-name insiders have made the official switch to an alternative. But perhaps the combination of how idiotic this solution is with everything occurring during NBA free agency will be the final push needed.
Is it finally RIP To Twitter? We'll find out, but it does feel like it's dancing as close to the edge as ever.