Twitter recently implemented certain backend changes that sparked significant controversy on social media platforms. Users were temporarily subjected to limitations on the number of tweets they could read, and the company unexpectedly altered the functionality of TweetDeck, a tool popular among various media organizations. Unfortunately, these modifications have also impacted the discoverability of tweets through Google Search.
The Verge has reported that Google acknowledges its restricted capacity to display Twitter results in light of these developments.
According to spokesperson Lara Levin, Twitter is aware of the limitations imposed on Google’s ability to crawl Twitter, which has resulted in a diminished display of tweets and pages from the site in search results. Levin further explained that website owners have the authority to control whether crawlers can access their content.
Twitter made changes to its platform due to concerns over data scraping and the impact it had on the user experience. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, stated that several hundred organizations were aggressively scraping Twitter data, leading to degradation in service for normal users. To address this issue, Twitter implemented mandatory logins or account creation to access content on the platform.
In response to the situation, Musk introduced reading limits for different tiers of users, including subscribers, non-subscribers, and new non-subscribers. The limits set were 10,000 tweets for verified accounts, 1,000 tweets for unverified accounts, and 500 tweets for new unverified accounts.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, expressed his support for Musk’s handling of the company, acknowledging the challenges of running Twitter and trusting that the team is doing their best under immense constraints. He emphasized the goal of seeing Twitter thrive and expressed optimism for its future.
