Twitter shuts access to people sans accounts, Musk blames data scraping

Twitter has stopped browsing access on its web platform for people without accounts, and they have to first create an account to view tweets.

Elon Musk said on Saturday that this drastic action was necessary due to “extreme levels of data scraping”.

However, the move could backfire as if tweets are not publicly accessible, search engine algorithms could rank Twitter's content lower. Musk also said it was a temporary emergency measure.

“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users,” the Twitter owner posted.

“Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data,” he claimed.

According to Musk, it is rather “galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup's outrageous valuation”.

Reports said that like many of Twitter's recent changes, the latest move could easily backfire.

“It is understandable that Twitter wants to protects its data from being taken for free, though this move undoubtedly reduces Twitter's reach and exposure from external links/embeds, as well as raising some privacy concerns. Hopefully a better solution can be found longer term,” posted @TitterDaily.

With this move, Musk aims to prevent AI tools from searching Twitter.