Following Twitter’s recent move to set rate limits, Instagram’s Threads has also declared its plans to implement similar restrictions due to a surge in spam attacks.
Earlier this month, Twitter had imposed new limits on the number of tweets users could access due to an extended outage. Musk had explained that Twitter was experiencing “extreme levels of data scraping” from numerous organizations and other sources of “system manipulation.”
The platform’s initial response was to allow Verified users to browse a maximum of 6,000 posts daily, while unverified users could only access 600. However, following user backlash, Musk increased these limits to 10,000 for Verified accounts, 1,000 for unverified accounts, and 500 for new, unverified accounts. Over the past weekend, Musk announced a further 50% increase in the rate limit for Verified users, allowing them to view 15,000 posts.
Critics had argued that Twitter’s unconventional approach to combating spam and bot issues could have been avoided had the company not dismissed a significant portion of its engineering staff. Users reminisced about the pre-Elon era when scrolling through the Twitter timeline was uninterrupted, except during the platform’s early days when regular outages were common.
However, it appears that even Meta’s new app, Instagram Threads, is not immune to the challenges of spam and bots. Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, addressed the issue in a post on the Threads app, indicating the company’s plan to tighten rate limits, reports TechCrunch.
Mosseri stated on Monday morning, “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).”
Unlike Twitter’s strict limits on viewable posts, Mosseri suggested that users experiencing this issue should contact the company. This implies that the Threads team is willing to work with authentic users to prevent negatively impacting their experience.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the news with “Lmaooo. Copy cat”.
Lmaooo
Copy 🐈
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2023
Users have already begun to voice their complaints about the increase in comment spam on the platform. Some noted a surge in bot responses to their posts, while others reported spending significant time blocking bots promoting gambling and crypto sites.
With an urgent need to address the issues of spam and bots, it seems Instagram’s Threads is encountering challenges similar to those faced by Twitter.
