Twitter engages in mass layoffs and multiple things break on the site. There are also reports that they can’t pay rent in certain locations. Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisors, as they record a 59% reduction in advertising revenue.[5](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html)
Elon Musk posts tweets seemingly apologizing for some of the changes and says he will follow the will of the people by posting polls for users to vote on policy changes. Musk asks if he should step down, to which the majority vote in favour of his removal. He then goes on a tirade about bots after losing in the poll. He goes on to say that only paid subscribers will be permited to vote in future polls. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/20/elon-musk-breaks-silence-after-10-million-twitter-users-vote-for-him-to-step-down)
The crème de la crème is Elon Musk implementing a new restriction where you have to be logged in to see tweets. Inadvertently DDOSing his own site.
They adjusted blocked access in the back end, but didn’t adjust the frontend to deal with this situation.
If you try to access twitter while not logged in the frontend requests tweets from the backend, gets an error response and therefore tries again around 10 times per second.
The other reply seems more informed, but I’ll share another technical practice that would lead to increased load and thus risk of DDoS in general (I hadn’t heard of this change and issue of Twitter before reading about it here):
Delivering webpages without a logged-in user means you can cache (remember) commonly returned data and pages. You can repeatedly deliver the same thing.
For logged-in users, this is not the general case. A logged-in user has follows, blocks, and adjusted content selection. So rather than deliver a “standard view” a “user view” has to be generated.
This is generally true, but it would only result in minor increases in traffic as users sign up to see posts. The “create an account” page is cached to hell and back, obviously, and I don’t think anyone is going “oh geez better create an account so I don’t miss out!”
I can’t think of many (any?) Reddit users who have more of their time to creating useful, informative content. Moving here must have felt like a bigger step for you then for most of us. I’m really happy to see you here, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have these last few weeks. Welcome!
Transcription for the blind: Screenshot of a Twitter post from Elon Musk, Twitter handle @elonmusk, that says:
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
1:01 PM Jul 1, 2023 3.6M Views
-Transcription from a human volunteer. Let me know how I can do better.
Thank you for the transcription, human volunteer :)
The sequence of events from Elon Musk acquiring Twitter to now is an incredible journey.
Elon Musk bought a social media company for tens of billions, attempted to back out of the deal but couldn’t because of his ineptitude by signing away the ability to reneg on the deal.[1](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/technology/twitter-musk-lawsuit-reasons.html)
Then there was the freedom of speech advocacy from Musk where he ultimately unbanned racists and then he began sharing bigoted Tweets. But it’s only freedom of speech for his bigoted supporters, when authoritarian governments ask Musk to censor people/tweets he abides by their requests.[2](https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/)
The site becomes inundated with the alt right rife with bigotry.[3](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/)
The whole verified blue check mark debacle where verification became something you could pay for, with people making fake “official” accounts. For example a fake account impersonating a pharmaceutical company caused their stock to drop abruptly following a joke tweet.[4](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2022/11/12/fake-eli-lilly-twitter-account-claims-insulin-is-free-stock-falls-43/)
Twitter engages in mass layoffs and multiple things break on the site. There are also reports that they can’t pay rent in certain locations. Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisors, as they record a 59% reduction in advertising revenue.[5](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html)
Elon Musk posts tweets seemingly apologizing for some of the changes and says he will follow the will of the people by posting polls for users to vote on policy changes. Musk asks if he should step down, to which the majority vote in favour of his removal. He then goes on a tirade about bots after losing in the poll. He goes on to say that only paid subscribers will be permited to vote in future polls. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/20/elon-musk-breaks-silence-after-10-million-twitter-users-vote-for-him-to-step-down)
The crème de la crème is Elon Musk implementing a new restriction where you have to be logged in to see tweets. Inadvertently DDOSing his own site.
New York Times - Why Elon Musk Can’t Back Out of Buying Twitter, According to Twitter
Forbes - Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds
The Atlantic -Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
Forbes - Fake Eli Lilly Twitter Account Claims Insulin Is Free, Stock Falls 4.37%
New York Times - Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue
The Guardian - Elon Musk breaks silence after 10 million Twitter users vote for him to step down
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[6] ↩︎
I just kreamed seeing you here.
Knowledge Rules Everything Around Me, KREAM get the money, dolla dolla bill yall - Wu Tang 😋
It’s the legend PoppinKREAM! Glad to see you made it over here!
Grinned as soon as I saw the account name :)
No joke; I shot up out of my seat
Goddamn I missed seeing your comments. Welcome home, king.
Ahhh so glad to see you transitioned here!
PoppinKREAM!!! I’m so happy. Thank you!
Ha, a familiar face, so to speak. :)
Your posts have always been such a valuable resource. Glad to see you here!
Hohhh - THE PoppinKREAM!? I was in shock seeing your name pop up so soon in my time here, lol.
Okay to ask if you could add dates to the bullet pts? It’d be easier to visualize a timeline of these, I think.
How does not letting logged-in account access tweet end up DDDosing the site?
They adjusted blocked access in the back end, but didn’t adjust the frontend to deal with this situation.
If you try to access twitter while not logged in the frontend requests tweets from the backend, gets an error response and therefore tries again around 10 times per second.
The other reply seems more informed, but I’ll share another technical practice that would lead to increased load and thus risk of DDoS in general (I hadn’t heard of this change and issue of Twitter before reading about it here):
Delivering webpages without a logged-in user means you can cache (remember) commonly returned data and pages. You can repeatedly deliver the same thing.
For logged-in users, this is not the general case. A logged-in user has follows, blocks, and adjusted content selection. So rather than deliver a “standard view” a “user view” has to be generated.
This is generally true, but it would only result in minor increases in traffic as users sign up to see posts. The “create an account” page is cached to hell and back, obviously, and I don’t think anyone is going “oh geez better create an account so I don’t miss out!”
Good human
I can’t think of many (any?) Reddit users who have more of their time to creating useful, informative content. Moving here must have felt like a bigger step for you then for most of us. I’m really happy to see you here, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have these last few weeks. Welcome!
I’m so happy right now 😢
Good human
You can’t do much better than you’re already doing. Thank you for taking the time to transcribe!
You can’t do much better than you’re already doing. Thank you for taking the time to transcribe!