Instagram Threads under spam attack, Meta announces Twitter like rate limits for crackdown

It was not a long time ago when Twitter came under public scrutiny for introducing rate limits. Now Threads seems to carry on what was criticised when Twitter did it. Threads has introduced rate limits. This has limited the user’s ability to view as many posts as they want. Adam Mosseri announced their decision through a tweet, citing spam attacks as the reason for introducing the step.
Elon Musk, the head of Twitter, laughed at their decision in a reply to a screenshot of the decision that was posted on Twitter.

Previously, Twitter had introduced a series of restrictions and rules as Musk claimed that the platform was under attack from “several hundred organisations” that were putting in efforts to scrape off data from the platform. As a result, users were not allowed to access the tweets without signing in. Further, the platform introduced restrictions on how many tweets a user can view in a day. Elon Musk called the platform’s decisions temporary as he asserted that Twitter was “getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!”

Musk stepped up the platform’s response to the purported “extreme levels of data scraping.” Even for paying users of Twitter Blue, there is a limit on the number of tweets that can be viewed on Twitter. Verified users will have access to 6,000 posts per day, while unverified users will only have access to 600 posts per day, and newly created unverified users will only have access to 300 posts per day.

After receiving backlash from users, Musk increased the limits. Now, verified users can view 10,000 tweets, unverified users can access 1,000 tweets, and new unverified users will be able to see 500 tweets in a day.

Further, over the last weekend, Musk announced that they would increase the rate limit for verified users by 50%.

However, as observed, Twitter was criticised for its unorthodox ways to solve the issue of spam and bots. It is also contended that Twitter wouldn’t have been subjected to such issues if it hadn’t laid off such an enormous workforce. Before Musk took over the platform, it was never an issue to scroll through as many tweets as one wished for, apart from the fail whale moments where Twitter went down because of too many tweets.

Nevertheless, it looks like Threads has also taken up the same solution to combat the issue of bots and spam.

In a post on the Threads app, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri described the issue, saying that “Spam attacks have picked up, so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives). If you get caught up [in] those protections let us know.”
This implies that even the most active Threads users can have app usage and post-viewing restrictions. In contrast to Twitter’s strict restrictions on viewable posts, Mosseri is advising individuals to get in touch if they start to run into this issue. This suggests that the Threads team is willing to engage with honest users to minimise any negative effects on their experience.