Twitter is now blocking visitors from viewing tweets without logging in.
If you are fond of checking out tweets from various users without logging in or even signing up, the blue bird now prevents visitors from doing so.
Twitter Blocks Unregistered Visitors From Viewing Tweets
As per a report by Mashable, the Elon Musk-owned service Twitter has decided to raise its drawbridge, effectively blocking unregistered visitors from accessing tweets and profiles. In other words, users now have to log in if they want a slice of the action of the microblogging service.
A pop-up appears when an unregistered user attempts to view a tweet on the Musk-owned platform. It asks them to sign into their account. There are three options to log in via Google or Apple or the classic method of signing in using your username or password.
For those who have yet to bother creating a Twitter account, the pop-up also gives visitors an option to sign up. The unexpected changes on the platform began surprisingly rolling out on June 30, Friday. Some users were shocked when the service asked them to log in before viewing a tweet.
Why Did Twitter Block Unregistered Visitors?
According to The Verge, Epic Games Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Sweeney complained in his recent tweet about how paywalls and account walls ruin the internet.
He says, "The internet feels increasingly broken." The Epic big boss notes that news sites are now inaccessible due to a paywall, requiring users to pay before reading articles. Meanwhile, other platforms are gatekept by account walls, preventing non-users from accessing content.
Sweeney further swiped at Google for spamming the search engine with "ads and SEO to the point of uselessness." And this time, he highlighted that "Twitter is account walled," saying that all of these make web browsing "horrible."
Musk, fond of replying to various tweets on the platform, responds to the tweet of the Epic Games boss. He discloses, "Several hundred organizations (maybe more) were scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, to the point where it was affecting the real user experience."
The Verge notes that the billionaire entrepreneur Twitter owner explains that the changes in tweet viewing are a mere "temporary emergency measure," blaming "data pillaging" for the added security.
As Reuters reports, Musk recently raised concern at how AI companies, such as the ChatGPT maker, OpenAI, have allegedly trained their language models using Twitter's data. The billionaire threatened to bring these firms to court. He says, "We absolutely will take legal action against those who stole our data."
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