Twitter’s rate limit exceeded: A post-mortem 

Months ago, when I explained Elon Musk’s extreme self-absorption in a blog post, I was told off because what billionaires do must be correct and “smart”. A week after that post was published, everything I said about Musk was corroborated in news reports. According to some software programmers working at Twitter, they were contacted in the early hours one morning after the Super Bowl.

The programmers were told there was an “urgent situation”. Musk was upset because President Biden got more views on his tweet. The programmers were ordered to rewrite the code for the platform so that Musk’s tweets would be served to the home feed of every account. Instead of acting more professionally after being caught out, Musk now sends the press the poop emoji when they ask him to comment on stories about himself.

But my point is that I was able to speak on Musk’s character and accurately predict his motives because I was paying attention to his behaviour, and it fit a pattern. Please note that I have kept adding postscripts to that post because Twitter’s devolution is relentless. 

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announces name change to X (after Threads drama) 

At 05:30 on Sunday, July 2, I opened up my Twitter app to look for updates from France, which was on fire. After a few scrolls down the trending page, I got a notification which read “rate limit exceeded”. I hadn’t used Twitter all that week so I was confused. When I tried to check my own profile, I couldn’t see my own tweets. I could tweet and reply from my notifications but I could not delete anything from my own timeline. Naturally, I threw an epic tantrum. 

By Wednesday, I was raring to go on Threads by Meta. It’s no surprise that the new microblogging app got 100 million signups within a week. You see, Elon Musk’s ego had got the better of him and he switched off (what he thinks is) his customers’ dopamine supply. In some countries, however, Twitter is a utility – an emergency hotline in case of natural disasters. For businesses, it’s where they do customer care. Small businesses use the app to network with potential partners and find new customers. 

Fast forward three weeks, and I’m reaching again for the face slap emoji. This post was originally set to private, but I exhumed it after reading that Musk announced he was looking to change Twitter’s logo to an “X”. To be perfectly frank, I’m quite bored with his late night sh*tposting. He’s dosing with ketamine (when executives take drugs at work it’s called “microdosing for mental health” but if you’re a pleb you go to jail), so I wouldn’t be surprised if another quarter passes and the logo doesn’t get changed.

Integrity and dignity: A refresher   

Swirling around us is a palpable lack of reverence for ostentatious wealth. And we know why that happens: Some people have used their power and privilege to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Their supporters allow them to get away with things that they would never tolerate for ordinary people. But what many of us still fail to realise is that wealthy people throw tantrums at scale. And the “rate limit exceeded” drama is an example of a wealthy person having a massive tantrum and misusing their power.

Before I continue this Twitter post-mortem, let me take a moment to review two concepts which are relevant to this discussion. Integrity is the quality of having strong moral principles. It means being truthful, fair, and consistent in one’s actions. Dignity means having a sense of self-worth and treating others with respect, regardless of their social status or position in life. People with dignity and integrity are trustworthy and reliable. I feel that Musk is neither trustworthy nor reliable and this is why he treats Twitter’s users like they’re programmable software and not real people.

The Twitter is over party

At 06:00 on July 2, I logged in on a different device so I could find out what was going on. I read reports that Twitter had not renewed its Google Cloud contract, which expired on June 30. But soon, my direct messages and tweets were vaporised and I couldn’t use the app at all. 

A few people said that Twitter was in self DDoS mode because the code was edited to force people to log in. Elsewhere, Muskovites claimed he was a hero for fighting “bots” (forgetting that an army of them pump up his engagement on there, but c’est la guerre). My theory is quite different. When I saw Musk replying to his own tweet to humblebrag that his post achieved the highest view count ever, at over half a billion views, I understood that this was his true objective. 

France and Belgium were burning and tweeters couldn’t communicate with their networks to get information out. In Japan, where Twitter is a utility, users were worried that they’d be cut off from life saving updates during a flood or earthquake. Ukraine is still being invaded by Russia. Imagine being the world’s richest human and openly obsessing about your tweet views (a cosmetic feature) while people are fighting to live.

This is what happened, in my opinion. By late Saturday afternoon (US time zones) on July 1, most Twitter users were following news stories and commenting on events. Days earlier, SCOTUS said it was okay for businesses to refuse to serve clients they didn’t agree with. Against the human rights implications of this development, it is easy to imagine that tweeters were quite uninterested in reading more of Musk’s gibberish. During Pride Month, he was liking transphobic tweets and people told him off. On top of that, I believe he was frustrated by everyone’s focus on “not him” and he put the platform on timeout. Now that all eyes are on him, he seems to be stuck repeating himself.  

Postscript: July 24, 2023. So the logo change took place already. However, Twitter’s branding is still there. On my Chrome browser, the platform is called “twitter.com”, and the posts are called “tweets.” It’s really slap dash but we’ll see.