#TwitterDown: Elon Musk announces temporary read limits on Twitter

Updated: 8:15 PM EDT Jul 1, 2023

Thousands of Twitter users across several countries were unable to access the social media site, or faced difficulty and delays, Saturday. "Rate Limit Exceeded" and "#TwitterDown" are the two top trending topics on the app in the U.S., for those who have use of it. The former had over 40,000 tweets as of Saturday noon.Reports of outages began around 8 am EST, according to DownDetector, and shot up through the morning. As of noon EST, DownDetector showed more than 7,400 outage reports across the website. Users, including CNN journalists, flagged that their feeds weren't loading and that they were met with an error message saying, "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again." Others reported errors saying the site cannot retrieve tweets.Musk changes policyHours after users began reporting the problems, billionaire owner Elon Musk tweeted that the site had applied temporary limits "to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation."Verified accounts are limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, he tweeted, while unverified accounts are limited to just 600. New unverified accounts are at 300 posts a day.Musk began offering a blue verification check mark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue subscription service to grow revenue.Many expressed their frustration with the connection problems. Other trending topics in the US included: "Wtf twitter" and "Thanks Elon." Just yesterday, Twitter appeared to be restricting access to its platform for anyone not logged into an account. It was not clear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch. Most of the reported problems Saturday were on the website, at 44%, followed by 39% of problems reported on the app.CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment, but the platform responded with an automated poop emoji.Twitter users faced similar wide-ranging service disruptions in March, one of the largest outages since Elon Musk took over. More than 8,000 users reported disruptions in that instance.Musk is trying to turn around the platform, which faced an exodus of advertisers, with the onboarding of a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino.

In a now infamous tirade against Jews on a podcast earlier this month, Kanye West stated that "Adidas cannot drop me," regardless of his remarks.

With a social media uproar focused on Adidas brewing, Ye's theory is now being tested.

Here's the deal: The list of brands distancing themselves from West is growing by the day. Balenciaga and Vogue publicly cut ties last week, and on Monday talent agency CAA dropped West as a client, and production company MRC said that it's shelving a documentary on West. Now the scrutiny has shifted to the German sportswear giant and its long-standing partnership with the controversial artist.

Celebrities including Kat Dennings, Josh Gad and Meg Stalter condemned Adidas for sticking by West. Detlef Schrempf, former NBA sharpshooter and Adidas sponsoree wrote, "I represented the 3 stripes during my career & beyond. @adidas needs to make a statement NOW! Suspend any relationship w/ @kanyewest until he has received psychiatric help, but why wait? End it now. He won't change #erasethehate."

Jonathan Goldblatt of the ADL released a statement Monday aimed squarely at Adidas calling its failure to cut ties with West "pathetic."

Pressure on Adidas increased this weekend after a group of Neo-Nazis placed banners on the 405 highway in Los Angeles in support of West.

"Today on the 405 in Los Angeles. We are waiting @adidas," read Shannon Watts' tweet in response to the incident that received more than 100,000 likes.

Earlier this month after West wore a "White Lives Matter" shirt in public, Adidas said that it was reviewing its lucrative partnership with his Yeezy brand.

"After repeated efforts to privately resolve the situation, we have taken the decision to place the partnership under review," the apparel maker said in a statement. "We will continue to co-manage the current product during this period."

Since that statement, West has come out and targeted Jews explicitly in shocking public statements, becoming the most prominent openly anti-Semitic public figure in a generation.

With pressure mounting and West's hate campaign against Jewish people continuing, it seems the question is when, not if, Adidas will cut ties.

A jury on Friday decided Elon Musk didn’t deceive investors with his 2018 tweets about electric automaker Tesla in a proposed deal that quickly unraveled and raised questions about whether the billionaire had misled investors.

The verdict by the nine jurors was reached after less that two hours of deliberation following a three-week trial. It represents a major vindication for Musk, who spent about eight hours on the witness stand defending his motives for the August 2018 tweets at the center of the trial.

Musk, 51, wasn't on hand for the brief reading of the verdict, after making a surprise appearance earlier Friday for closing arguments that drew starkly different portraits of him.

Alex Spiro, Musk's attorney, declined to comment as he walked out of the courtroom following the verdicts.

The trial pitted Tesla investors represented in a class-action lawsuit against Musk, who is CEO of both the electric automaker and the Twitter service he bought for $44 billion a few months ago.

Shortly before boarding his private jet on Aug. 7, 2018, Musk tweeted that he had the financing to take Tesla private, even though it turned out he hadn’t gotten an iron-clad commitment for a deal that would have cost $20 billion to $70 billion to pull off.

Musk's integrity was at stake at the trial as well part of a fortune that has established him as one of the world’s richest people. He could have been saddled with a bill for billions of dollars in damages had the jury found him liable for the 2018 tweets that had already been deemed falsehoods by the judge presiding over the trial.

Earlier Friday, Musk sat stoically in court during the trial’s closing arguments while he was both vilified as a rich narcissist whose reckless behavior risks “anarchy” and hailed as a visionary looking out for the “little guy."

The trial hinged on whether Musk's tweeting in 2018 misled Tesla shareholders, steering them in a direction that they argue cost them billions of dollars. The civil case centered on two tweets Musk posted Aug. 7, 2018 about a Tesla buyout that never happened.

The first tweet Musk declared he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. A few hours later, Musk sent another tweet indicating that the deal was imminent.

The tweets caused Twitter’s stock to surge during a 10-day period covered by the lawsuit before falling back after Musk abandoned a deal in which he never had a firm financing commitment, based on evidence presented during the trial.

Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the Tesla shareholders, urged the jurors to rebuke Musk for his “loose relationship with the truth.”

“Our society is based on rules,” Porritt said. “We need rules to save us from anarchy. Rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else.”

Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, conceded the 2018 tweets were “technically inaccurate.” But he told the jurors, “Just because it’s a bad tweet doesn’t make it a fraud.”

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen, who presided over the trial, decided last year that Musk’s 2018 tweets were false and has instructed the jury to view them that way.

During roughly eight hours on the stand earlier in the trial, Musk insisted he believed he had lined up the funds from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take Tesla private after eight years as a publicly held company. He defended his initial August 2018 tweet as well-intentioned and aimed at ensuring all Tesla investors knew the automaker might be on its way to ending its run as a publicly held company.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk testified. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.”

Spiro echoed that theme in his closing argument.

“He was trying to include the retail shareholder, the mom and pop, the little guy, and not seize more power for himself," Spiro said.

Porritt, meanwhile, scoffed at the notion that Musk could have concluded he had a firm commitment after a 45-minute meeting at a Tesla factory on July 31, 2018, with Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, given there was no written documentation.

A text message that al-Rumayyan sent later in August that is part of the trial evidence also indicated that the Saudi fund was only interested in learning more about Musk's proposal to take Tesla private at a time the company was valued at about $60 billion.

“Apparently a $60 billion financing commitment was obtained and no one wrote down a single word," Porritt said, while asserting that amount was larger than the combined economic output of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.

Spiro, though, pointed to Musk's track record helping to start and run a list of companies that include digital payment pioneer PayPal and rocket ship maker SpaceX, in addition to Tesla. The automaker based in Austin, Texas, is now worth nearly $600 billion, despite a steep decline in its stock price last year amid concerns that Musk's purchase of Twitter would distract him from Tesla.

Recalling Musk's roots as a South African immigrant who came to Silicon Valley to create revolutionary tech companies, Spiro described his client “as the kind of person who believes the impossible is possible."

Porritt put a different twist on Musk's mindset during his presentation. “To Elon Musk, if he believes it, or just thinks about it, it's true.”

In his concluding remarks, Porritt told jurors their decision boiled down to their answer to one question: “Do the rules apply to everyone, or can Elon Musk do whatever he wants and not face the consequences?"

The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to remove its vice president after tweets she posted in 2016 that were critical of Asian people resurfaced.

KPIX-TV and KRON-TV in San Francisco report that the board voted 5-2 on Thursday in a vote of no confidence of Vice President Alison Collins.

The tweets resurfaced last week amid rising instances of hate against the AAPI community and in the wake of a mass shooting in Atlanta, where eight people — including six Asian women — were gunned down at three separate spas in the region.

In the 2016 tweets, Collins told her followers that she was looking to combat anti-black racism in the Asian community at her daughters’ school

Later on in her thread, Collins accused many Asian Americans of believing that they benefit as the “model minority.”

“In fact many Asian American [teachers], [students], and [parents] actively promote these myths. They use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and "get ahead",” she wrote. “Talk to many @thelowell parents and you will hear praise of Tiger Moms and disparagement of Black/Brown "culture.”

In a statement released to the San Francisco Chronicle, Collins apologized said her tweets had been “taken out of context.”

“A number of tweets and social media posts I made in 2016 have recently been highlighted,” Collins told the Chronicle. “They have been taken out of context, both of that specific moment and the nuance of the conversation that took place. I acknowledge that right now, in this moment my words taken out of context can be causing more pain for those who are already suffering. For the pain my words may have caused I am sorry, and I apologize unreservedly.”

After the tweets resurfaced, Collins was denounced by several local politicians, including Mayor London Breed and several California state assembly members.