Surprise! Threads does a Twitter, announces ‘rate limits’ on number of posts; Elon Musk reacts

On July 1, Twitter executive chair and CTO Elon Musk announced via a tweet that the microblogging platform will be slapping temporary rate limits on users to “address extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation”. The move became highly unpopular on the platform and witnessed many users even leaving it for rivals such as Mastodon and BlueSky, both of which witnessed a major uptick in new users. Now, less than a month later, Instagram’s Twitter-rival Threads has also been forced to apply rate limits in order to fight spam attacks on the platform. And Elon Musk reacted in a hilarious manner to this move.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on Threads, “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”.

Unlike Musk, Mosseri did not explain the details around the rate limits, such as the maximum number of posts that can be viewed, whether the reset occurs daily, hourly, or even weekly, and whether Meta Verified users will get a higher view limit than those without it. However, it can be said that just like Twitter, the Threads rate limit is also expected to be a temporary measure.

Elon Musk replies to Threads’ rate limit

The Twitter owner reacted to the announcement of the rate limit on Threads. Responding to a screenshot of the announcement, Musk tweeted, “Lmaooo Copy 🐈 (cat emoji)”. Clearly, calling Threads a copycat for emulating Twitter's strategy.

For those who are unaware of the entire Threads and Twitter rivalry, Musk regularly takes a dig at the Threads app for allegedly copying Twitter in almost all aspects. Threads has added a huge number of Twitter features to its platform.

At the time when Twitter had to implement a rate limit, Musk met with a lot of criticism for his draconian move to deal with data scrapping issues. It remains to be seen whether Mosseri or Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also receive a similar response.

Why is Threads implementing a rate limit

It is understood that Threads is suffering from a massive spam bot attack, where bots are posting promotional and annoying replies to threads and independent posts. Many users have also complained about the high number of spam posts on the platform, recently.

Even on the post where Mosseri announced the rate limit, one user said, “Thanks. I seem to waste half my time blocking bots pushing gambling and crypto sites”.

Another user expressed their frustration and said, “Amazed these bots kicked off so early when there is no API available? Got to a point at the w/e where half my posts got a bot response. Either gambling related or obvious “bait” messages”.

It should be noted that a few hours ago, Zuckerberg also posted on Threads and stated that the plan for the rest of the year is to work on the basics, assuring people that it is a playbook Meta has run many times through Facebook, Instagram, Stories, and Reels, and the company feels confident about building out the platform from here.