Alexandra Erin (she/her)

Holy heck.

For the first time in my life, Twitter is telling me that I'm over the daily limit. I can't tweet or even retweet.

And this is *not* a high activity day for me.

These new limits are apparently implemented hand-in-hand with the new API policies (whatever they actually wound up being) to "alleviate some of the strain on the behind-the-scenes part of Twitter and reduce downtime and error pages".

I've been talking about my suspicion that Twitter is breaking and Elon can't fix it.

I take this as confirmation.

Limiting activity and engagement will kill it as a social network.

Feb 8, 2023 at 9:49pmWeb
Show threadAlexandra Erin (she/her)Feb 8, 2023

Conversations cut off mid-stream without explanation because someone reached the limit. The days where breaking news and current events made Twitter what it is... people are going to hit their limits talking about the next award show dress or the next earthquake.

He's destroying the network effects that make Twitter work.

Show threadAlexandra Erin (she/her)Feb 8, 2023

People are going to start rationing their RTs and replies.

At the beginning he talked about conversation as something he wanted to see more of, even if he didn't really understand how it works.

But he keeps finding ways to discourage it.

Show threadAlexandra Erin (she/her)Feb 8, 2023

The info page confusingly says that the "daily limit" is broken down into smaller limits for "semi-hourly intervals" and that if we hit it, we should try again in a few hours.

But the error message I get says to try again tomorrow.

There is so little clarity or transparency about anything.

Show threadDave BulmerFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin I think that's all just smokescreens. I got the error message from my first tweet in four hours, and the last non-scheduled tweet on my feed is from before it happened. I suspect this is an incorrect error message popping up (because that's broken too) and it turned out turning API off broke the whole tweet button
Show threadMichael BuschFeb 8, 2023

@DemonTomatoDave @AlexandraErin I have posted 4 tweets in the past day, along with just 3 retweets.

I still got that error message just now.

I conclude the error message is itself in error.

Show threadAppropriate TributesFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin FINDINGS FOR THE FINDING PRESIDENT
Show threadMax Leibman has moved!Feb 10, 2023

@AlexandraErin Is there a tech executive who has less of a clue about what creates value for their business than Elon Musk?

He sees every positive externality as theft, even if it leads to the creation of value for Twitter. It‘s like he bought a beautiful, grand hotel, noticed people on the street admiring it, and screamed at his staff to change it so the outside is hideous. “All these freeloaders, enjoying the beauty of our hotel! They can see the beautiful part when they PAY to come INSIDE!”

Show threadLenaFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin Question really is, whether everyone is rationed. I suspect not.
Show threadSocial Reject  Feb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin Pretty sure its an error on their end. I tweeted like 3 tweet in 24 hrs and just now got hit with their limit.

Elon fucked up somewhere
Show threadGene Cowan 🏳️‍🌈Feb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin I got that every day when trying to block assholes.
Show threadKevin RiggleFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin 80+% it's bug and somebody pushed a bad ratelimiter config (not that I've... ever done that myself, hahahaha... 😅)
Show threadsamFeb 8, 2023

@AlexandraErin I don’t know anything about twitters infrastructure specifically and I wonder if somethings broken really badly on their backend and they’ve temporarily turned the tweets per day quota waaaaay down in a last ditch effort to throttle their load until whatever components are bogged down can catch up.

Like if I had a rapidly growing queue of tweets to process for some reason I might be inclined to do this instead of putting the entire site into an outage

Show threadAd LucemFeb 8, 2023

@AlexandraErin I think this is Twitter breaking down.

No announcement that this is the case, and some people can't login to their Tweetdeck (although my access is just fine).

I also get errors when trying to DM.

Show threadKnitronomiconFeb 8, 2023

@AlexandraErin I just tried to reply to a tweet - first time I've tweeted in 3 weeks, first reply since Feb 1st - and got the 'over limit' response. I guess if you're not using twatter regularly, then zero tweets is over the limit?

Also, all my direct messages have vanished. Probably something to do with banning the twitter API having broken everything else...

Show threadZ80 InsideFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin My sum total of activity today is 4 retweets. This is either a ridiculously low limit or Mars Boy has got loose in the data centre again.
Show threadVHaschFeb 8, 2023

@AlexandraErin

Maybe he fired the servers, too?

Show threadIvonne Spinoza 🎬✏️Feb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin he fired all the engineers that kept that poor bird alive 🥲
Show threadnormshawFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin So why are you still on Twitter? Many of us haven't logged in there for months and are happier here.
Show threadDDRFeb 8, 2023
@AlexandraErin It seems the daily limit is set to 0 right now, so I wouldn't read too much in to it as a strategic move. You can still schedule tweets fine though, as a workaround.