Meta’s new social platform Threads announced it would impose rate limits. But it’s not doing it quite the same way Twitter added theirs.
Twitter owner Elon Musk was quick to speak up when Threads announced rate limits on its platform. But you could expect that. Musk caught a lot of flak for imposing them on Twitter recently.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, posted on Threads last week the rate limits would stop spam attacks.
This, he said, would mean “more unintentionally limiting active people,” which he called “false positives.”
“If you get caught up in these protections, let us know,” he wrote.
Post by @mosseriView on Threads
What he didn’t say is, “To avoid the limits, just subscribe.” That, on the other hand, is exactly Twitter’s answer to the limit issue. It comes off there as a ploy to push more people into subscribing to Twitter Blue.
That’s not the only way Threads’ rate limits differ from Twitter’s
Musk claimed his platform’s rate limits were because of artificial intelligence bots that were “scraping data.” They found that scraping, he said, to be at “extreme levels.”
Mashable was quick to point out how happy Twitter was about news of Threads’ limits. They showed examples from Twitter employees and Musk himself reacting to the news.
In fact, they pointed out what they referred to as examples of hypocrisy on the part of Twitter.
That’s because the kind of rate limits Threads imposed are the kind that nearly every platform uses. In fact, it says, it’s the same kind Twitter used before announcing their more “extreme” limits:
According to Meta employees, Threads is not limiting the amount of posts users can view, which is what Twitter did.
The rate limits on Threads instead targets common spammy behavior, such as the amount of comments made and number of users that an account can follow over a certain period of time.
Mashable
Mashable went a step further, researching the age of Twitter’s stated action rate limits, which is what Threads is implementing as dating back to 2018.
So unlike limits that restrict how many posts Twitter users can read, which further seems to erode the usefulness of Twitter for those who don’t subscribe, these action rate limits will limit how many posts you can like or how many comments you can leave.
Reading posts on a platform are a key part of the experience on that platform.
Not everyone likes everything they see. Fewer still comment on every post they see. I can certainly understand how those who do could come off as spammy.
I’ve never reached a limit on liking, following or commenting.
Some colleagues of mine in the newsroom at the real job, however, easily reach Twitter’s limit, which blocks their ability to simply read other posts.
Nice try, Twitter, but not all limits are created equal…especially when you’re trying to force more people to pay for basic service that has been free for all these years.
