Users leaving Twitter en masse: It introduces new restrictions for free accounts, unregistered users

Twitter users have started “migrating” to the Bluesky social media platform en masse after Elon Musk announced new restrictions for non-paid and unregistered users of Twitter Blue…

Twitter users have started “migrating” to the Bluesky social media platform en masse after Elon Musk announced new restrictions for non-paid and unregistered users of Twitter Blue.

It is not yet known how many users have decided to switch from Twitter to Bluesky, but it is known that the latter has temporarily stopped the possibility of creating new profiles; this social media platform began to have technical problems due to the inflow of a large number of users.

View limit for free accounts

Limits on the number of tweets viewed on all Twitter accounts have been introduced, and Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform, has confirmed this. Verified (paid) accounts are limited to reading 6,000 messages per day, while free accounts are limited to just 600. And new unverified accounts are limited to only 300 tweets per day.

According to Musk, such restrictions were introduced by developers deliberately to combat scraping (mass automated data collection), in which several hundred organizations are now actively engaged, as well as to combat system manipulation.

A little later, Musk updated the size restrictions; now verified users can view 8,000 tweets, unverified users—800, and newly registered unverified users—400 tweets.

Since the beginning of the year, 385,000 Android and iOS smartphone users worldwide have subscribed to Twitter Blue. But this is just a tiny percentage of all users. The number of users reaches almost 240 million. According to Twitter's plans, by 2028, the company will profit from 55% of users through the Twitter Blue subscription.

Blocking the display of tweets for unregistered users

Recently, Twitter began to block the display of any publications (tweets, polls, etc.) to unregistered users. Previously, these users could view tweets without registering.

According to Musk, the administration of this social media platform resorted to such unpopular measures due to the increasing workload of the platform. The “traffic” from non-registered users was so high that it caused inconvenience to registered customers, some of whom subscribed to Twitter Blue.

Some experts believe that Twitter has now shifted to supporting paid users and ignoring everyone else. This social media platform is also trying to force free users to subscribe by introducing new restrictions.

Mass exodus of Twitter users

Many users, who were dissatisfied with Twitter's policies, began to move to the Bluesky social media platform. The latter even had to temporarily suspend the registration of new accounts in order to solve the technical problems caused by the massive flow of users from Twitter.

As noted by The Verge, the reason for the departure of many users from Twitter was the introduction of new restrictions for users who do not have a paid subscription to Twitter Blue.

“We will temporarily be pausing Bluesky sign-ups while our team continues to resolve the existing performance issues,” Bluesky wrote in a post. “We’ll keep you updated when invite codes will resume functionality. We’re excited to welcome more users to our beta soon!”

Bluesky is a Twitter analogue that was launched in beta testing mode in early 2023. The project is being developed with the support of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.