Twitter quietly backtracks on requiring users to log in to see tweets
The platform is becoming slightly more usable just as Meta opens up its Twitter competitor.
Several days after Twitter stopped showing tweets to logged-out users, that basic functionality seems to be returning. Several Engadget editors are once again able to see individual tweets without being logged into their accounts. Profiles still seem to be busted for those who aren’t signed in, however. For instance, I’m able to see a user’s bio, but their feed of tweets isn’t showing up. Meanwhile, tweet previews are working in iMessage again for some folks.
Making tweets inaccessible to logged-out users was a “temporary emergency measure,” according to Twitter owner Elon Musk. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users,” he wrote.
The company gave a similar explanation as to why it temporarily put limits on the number of tweets each user is able to read per day. On Tuesday, it said it made that move, which busted various Twitter apps, to “detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors that are harming the platform,” such as those who are scraping data to train artificial intelligence models. Twitter added that the rate limits were affecting a small percentage of users at that point.
Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment. Still, public tweets are once again becoming available for anyone to view just as Meta starts rolling out its Twitter competitor, which is called Threads. That service is expected to go live in several markets on Thursday, but not in the European Union.
