Shortly thereafter, users began posting screenshots on the web confirming the inability to view after exceeding the message limit, including on the pages of corporate advertisers.

Advertising industry veterans say the move is hampering the work of Linda Yaccarino, who took over as Twitter CEO last month and has been trying to build relationships with advertisers who left the service after Musk bought it.

According to Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, limiting users’ views could be a “disaster” for the platform’s advertising business.

According to Kai-Cheng Yang, a researcher at Indiana University in Bloomington, the restrictions effectively block the ability of third parties, including search engines, to collect data from Twitter. That capability will continue to exist, but the methods will become more sophisticated and less effective.

Really free access?
The company said there will be a “new form of free access” that will allow “the creation of up to 1,500 tweets per month.” Many of Twitter’s so-called “good” bots – the automated accounts that tweet everything from historical photos to helpful reminders – will be able to continue working on the platform.

Previously, the future of these accounts was uncertain, as many bot creators said they wouldn’t pay for API access.

Paid basic access that offers low level of API usage, and access to Ads API for a $100 monthly fee.

— Developers (@XDevelopers) February 8, 2023

But what will happen?
The truth is that the limit of creating 1,500 tweets a month could affect the bots that tweet most often. Fifteen hundred tweets per month equates to about 50 tweets per day, which could be a problem for Twitter’s most active bots.

Additionally, the company gave a brief reprieve to developers who will lose access to the API, saying it has extended the current version of the API until February 13.

Access free…
After that date, developers who want access to Twitter’s “paid basic” API level will have to pay $100 per month, according to Twitter. The company also confirmed that it will discontinue the Premium API and that subscribers will have the option to apply for the Enterprise version of the service. There’s no word yet on what options, if any, researchers currently using Twitter’s developer tools will have for their projects.

The feature gives users an opportunity to share tweets with a certain number of people. However, there will be a limit – users will be allowed to add up to 150 people to their Twitter “Flock”.

The mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi posted some information about how the new option will operate. For example, if you are in someone’s Flock and they send out a tweet, a label may appear saying:

“You can see this Tweet because the author has added you to their Flock.”

Also, if there is someone who you don’t want to be in your Flock anymore, you can easily remove them from your list and they will not be notified about that.

Tatiana Britt, Twitter’s spokesperson said:

“Twitter is always working on new ways to help people engage in healthy conversations, and we’re currently exploring ways to let people share more privately.”

Tatiana Britt added that at that moment they have no further news about the option.

The new system allows users to discuss and provide context for tweets that they believe are false or misleading. Birdwatch is a standalone section of Twitter that will initially only be available to a small circle of users. Priority will not be given to high-ranking users, instead, they will need to use an account associated with a real phone number and email address.

“Birdwatch allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe is misleading or false, and write notes that provide informative context,” Twitter Vice President of Product Keith Coleman wrote in a press release. “We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable.”

Birdwatch users can report tweets from the drop-down menu directly in the main Twitter interface, but the discussion about the authenticity of the tweet will remain only in the Birdwatch section. Birdwatch members may rate others’ notes as a mechanism to prevent malicious users from playing the system and incorrectly labelling true tweets as fake. These ratings are then collected in a Birdwatch account, separate from the Twitter account, unlike Reddit’s user rating system.

Twitter said it hopes to build a community of “Birdwatchers” that may eventually help moderate and label tweets in its main product, but will not be immediately labelling tweets with Birdwatch suggestions. The company is heavily focused on the threat of “manipulation” by dishonest users who may seek to use the platform as another weapon in online information wars.

“We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this – from making it resistant to manipulation attempts to ensure it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors. We’ll be focused on these things throughout the pilot,” Coleman wrote