Last week, Twitter implemented changes on the social messaging site that prevented anonymous users, those without an account, from reading tweets, searching the site or browsing profiles. The restriction has been lifted silently, but not completely.
Elon Musk revealed on Twitter that the measures were temporary to block data scraping and system manipulation. Just a few days later, Twitter began to introduce read caps for registered users, even those who paid the company for verification.
Later on, Twitter informed its business partners that this was done to combat spam and bots that were plaguing the site.
The changes that Twitter implemented had side effects. Previews of tweets were no longer posted on third-party sites and services, and many users who found links to Twitter on sites or in chats discovered that opening these would not reveal the content.
Earlier today, Twitter appears to have lifted some of the restrictions. Links to individual tweets on the site open again, even for anonymous users without account. Similarly, previews of links appear again on sites that support these.
Anonymous users may notice, however, that they can't access all of the content on the site yet. Attempts to open the profile of a Twitter user returns a "something went wrong. Try reloading" error instead of the list of tweets.
While anonymous users may access individual linked tweets right now on Twitter, they can't access profiles, the Twitter homepage or read replies.
The message shows up on Twitter without any replies. Attempts to open a trending topic or to access the profile are either met with the "something went wrong" error message or a prompt to sign-in or sign-up to access the content.
The limitations impact third-party tools such as Nitter, which still can't be used to access Twitter content in privacy. This means, that it is still not possible to bypass the Twitter login prompts to access content on the site without account.
The silent change has improved the situation slightly, as individual tweets will show up again on third-party sites and may be viewed by anyone who follows a link that points to Twitter.
Hiding replies on the site or options to browse topics reduces the usefulness of the site significantly, on the other hand.
Meta is launching Threads today, which is a direct Twitter competitor. Threads, just like Twitter, is data hungry, which can be verified when looking at the data privacy section of the app on the Apple App Store.
The limitations at Twitter could give Threads a boost, as users are looking for alternatives to the, sometimes, erratic changes on Twitter.
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