Why does Musk limit Twitter?
Twitter limits viewable tweets. The limit came just after Twitter began requiring users to log into an account on the social media platform to view tweets, which Musk called a "temporary contingency measure" to discourage "extreme levels" of data scraping and system manipulation
Turbulent weekend for Elon Musk after the restrictions announced, activated and later remodulated on Twitter, the microblogging platform that the billionaire bought for $44 billion in December.
On July 1, Twitter temporarily limited the reading of tweets to limit the use of data available on the social network by third parties, in particular by those who feed artificial intelligence models.
Also on the same day, Musk wrote on Twitter that users with verified accounts, who pay $8 a month for a premium subscription service (those with the so-called blue check), can read 6,000 posts a day. Those with unverified accounts and new unverified accounts could read 600 and 300 tweets a day, respectively, he said.
Users posted screenshots in response, showing they were unable to see any tweets, including tweets on corporate advertiser pages, after hitting the limit.
It is a choice that was made "to remedy the extreme levels of data collection and manipulation of the system," Elon Musk explained in a tweet.
The move comes as AI-powered chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, which scrape or harvest data from the internet to power their models, have exploded in popularity. Twitter and rival Reddit have indicated their intention to block groups from collecting data for free, reports the Financial Times .
All the details.
ELON MUSK'S MOVE ON TWITTER POSTS
On Saturday, Elon Musk imposed "temporary limits" on Twitter to counter "high levels of system manipulation and data scraping". In summary, the limit of 6,000 posts to read per day for verified accounts, while for unverified accounts the threshold drops to 600 posts per day, up to 300 posts for new unverified accounts.
In yet another exercise in irony, this post achieved a record view count!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2023
USER PROTEST
The changes resulted in a quick reaction from users, with many tweets receiving an error message stating “frequency limit exceeded” and being blocked from seeing further posts. The phrase "speed limit exceeded" trended on Twitter on Saturday morning, prompting memes and controversy from users annoyed by the platform's new policy.
Coinciding with the announcement of the new limitations, reports of inaccessibility to the platform increased. The timeline has disappeared, the user profiles have disappeared: nothing can be consulted from a desktop PC, app or mobile version of the site. On the Downdetector website, which independently collects malfunction reports, it is possible to observe their progress, reports Agi today.
THE “REVERSE”
Hours later, Musk also said that the limit would be increased to 8,000 posts per day for verified users, 800 per day for unverified and 400 posts per day for new unverified users. Up to the new limitations: 10 thousand for verified users, 1000 for unverified and 500 for new unverified accounts.
Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
THE MOTIVATIONS OF MR MUSK
The limits follow Musk's recent decision to require an account on the platform to read tweets: a 'temporary emergency' measure, he explained in recent days, to limit 'very aggressive' data scraping conducted by hundreds of companies to the detriment of the social customer experience.
Already on June 30, the US entrepreneur had announced that it would no longer be possible to read messages on Twitter without connecting via an account. “Almost every AI company, from start-ups to the world's largest corporations, was collecting vast amounts of data,” Musk explained. “It's quite galling having to bring a large number of servers online in an emergency just to facilitate the outrageous valuation of an AI start-up,” he added.
THE FRECCIATINA AT OPENAI & CO
Musk had previously expressed disappointment about AI companies like OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, for using Twitter data to train their large language models.
But Twitter isn't the only company against AI training through digital platforms. Even Reddit has complained against companies using their information to train AI models. Kai-Cheng Yang, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, told Reuters that the limits appear to be effective in blocking third parties, including search engines, from scraping Twitter data as before. "It might still be possible, but the methods would be much more sophisticated and much less efficient," he added.
PRESUMED OR REAL BATTLE AGAINST THE DEVELOPMENT OF AI?
So the move that enraged Twitter users rests on Musk's motives to curb training of AI models with "massive amounts of data" from the platform.
In recent times Musk has become increasingly vocal in his fears of broader existential threats from AI systems. He has also publicly criticized OpenAI for becoming, in his view, less transparent and too commercially oriented in its pursuit of advanced AI. In April, the American billionaire warned in an interview with Fox News that artificial intelligence could lead to the "destruction of civilization."
Earlier that March, the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur also joined a group of other tech industry leaders who signed an open letter calling for a six-month break in the so-called "out-of-control" race to develop the i.
While Musk is criticizing OpenAI and plans to compete with it, he helped found it in 2015 as a nonprofit. He has since said that he was disappointed with OpenAI because it no longer operates as a nonprofit and is building a technology that he believes takes sides in political and social debates.
Yet, also in the April interview, Musk said he wants to create a rival for the AI offerings of tech giants Microsoft and Google. In his interview with Fox News , Musk said "we're about to start something I call TruthGPT." Musk described her as a "ultimate truth-seeking artificial intelligence" who "is concerned with understanding the universe." According to media reports , Elon Musk has created a new company dedicated to artificial intelligence and it is called X.AI, which is dedicated to artificial intelligence.
Who knows if the "anti-data scraping" limitations will also apply to his generative artificial intelligence startup…
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-musk-limita-twitter/ on Mon, 03 Jul 2023 14:10:01 +0000.