Twitter makes sign-in compulsory to view tweets, Elon Musk says temporary measure
Currently, if you do not have an account on Twitter, you can no longer view the tweets of your favourite stars, influencers, and politicians. Users who try to view content on Twitter will be asked to sign up for an account or log into an existing account
- Jul 1, 2023,
- Updated Jul 1, 2023 1:00 PM IST
Microblogging platform Twitter has now made it mandatory to create an account on its platform in order to view tweets. However, former Twitter boss Elon Musk said the move is a "temporary emergency measure".
Currently, if you do not have an account on Twitter, you can no longer view the tweets of your favourite stars, influencers, and politicians. Users who try to view content on Twitter will be asked to sign up for an account or log into an existing account to see their desired tweets. Before Friday, users could still see tweets that appeared in Google searches or were embedded in other content.
The update came into effect late on Friday, though Twitter didn’t make any official announcement in this regard. Users discovered it themselves when they tried to view content without signing in.
Later in the day, former Twitter boss Musk acknowledged the change, calling it a ‘temporary emergency measure.’ He further said that this measure was taken to address the problem of third-party scraping of data from the platform. Musk stated that the excessive data scraping was negatively impacting the service for regular users.
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk tweeted.
Musk has previously criticised companies for using Twitter's data without its authorisation. He accused Microsoft of illegally training its artificial intelligence using Twitter data and raised concerns about OpenAI, a start-up, doing the same.
Microblogging platform Twitter has now made it mandatory to create an account on its platform in order to view tweets. However, former Twitter boss Elon Musk said the move is a "temporary emergency measure".
Currently, if you do not have an account on Twitter, you can no longer view the tweets of your favourite stars, influencers, and politicians. Users who try to view content on Twitter will be asked to sign up for an account or log into an existing account to see their desired tweets. Before Friday, users could still see tweets that appeared in Google searches or were embedded in other content.
The update came into effect late on Friday, though Twitter didn’t make any official announcement in this regard. Users discovered it themselves when they tried to view content without signing in.
Later in the day, former Twitter boss Musk acknowledged the change, calling it a ‘temporary emergency measure.’ He further said that this measure was taken to address the problem of third-party scraping of data from the platform. Musk stated that the excessive data scraping was negatively impacting the service for regular users.
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk tweeted.
Musk has previously criticised companies for using Twitter's data without its authorisation. He accused Microsoft of illegally training its artificial intelligence using Twitter data and raised concerns about OpenAI, a start-up, doing the same.