No, Threads Is Not ‘Copying Twitter’ With Rate Limiting
from the come-on-people dept
The tech press often gets called out for lazy journalism, and here we have yet another example. On Monday, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri posted that due to an influx of spam on Threads (and there’s been a lot), the company was tightening up its rate limits:
He said:
Spam attacks have picked up so we’re going to have to get tighter on things like rate limits, which is going to mean more unintentionally limiting active people (false positives). If you get caught up those protections let us know.
Given that there was just a big hullabaloo about Twitter rate limiting views for some questionable reasons, many in the tech press world went for the layup, claiming that Threads was “copying” Twitter.
And, of course, even Elon Musk couldn’t resist pretending that this vindicated his rate limiting, responding to someone showing a screenshot of hitting a rate limit on Threads by saying “seems oppressive.”
And, sure, Zuckerberg has copied some of Elon’s worst decisions, like charging for verification.
But claiming that changing the rate limits on Threads is copying Twitter is lazy, misleading, and wrong. Every social media website has some form of rate limiting to deal with actual spam. But the rate limiting is generally for spam-like activities. For example: automated posting that posts hundreds of times in a row. Or automated signups of multiple accounts. Or mass followings. Basically spam like activities.
Rate limiting for things like that is standard practice that basically any social media site is going to have in its bag of tricks to deal with spammers.
The thing that Musk did with Twitter was different: it was rate limiting posts viewed, which makes no sense at all, especially on a social media platform where ad views are so important. There is no indication that Threads is using rate limiting on post views. Even in the screenshot above, it notes that the rate limits are for things “like following people.” That’s standard anti-spam protection.
There is a real difference between standard rate limiting and ridiculously stupid rate limiting, and anyone reporting on this stuff should know the difference, but some are too eager to go with the easy story, rather than the right story.
Filed Under: adam mosseri, elon musk, journalism, rate limiting, rate limits, spam
Companies: meta, threads, twitter
Comments on “No, Threads Is Not ‘Copying Twitter’ With Rate Limiting”
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
The willingness of MM to use TD to produce and distribute anti-Twitter and anti-Musk propaganda weekly is truly impressive!
Re:
Your ability to believe lies while ignoring reality is even more impressive.
Re:
The ability of Jhon Smith to use TD’s comment section to public expose himself as a butthurt scammer in need to be put away is truly stunning.
And I’m no fan of the thin blue line, either.
Re:
Which part of this is anti-Musk? Which part is propaganda?
The post is critical of the tech press.
But, look, we get it, you need to suck up to Musk because you have a massive inferiority complex and you feel the need to kiss ass to an authoritarian doofus, because you know you’ll never amount to shit yourself.
Re: Come at me bro
Hey Jhon you manage to not sexually harass anyone today?
Re:
Weekly? All anyone has to do is mention the most recent stupid thing they’re doing in public and it’s daily at minimum. In fact, I can name a couple of stories that didn’t make it here.
The fix for that is Twitter stopping activity that’s stupid and newsworthy at the same time.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Prolonged Exposure
It’s a warning signal for the terminally online. Similar to a radiation badge. You can’t sell ads if you kill your customers.
Re:
I wasn’t aware that prolonged exposure to Musk’s Twitter could cause brain damage, but that explains a lot actually.
Re: Re:
Right now? It seems almost guaranteed.
Re:
“Only Republicans and their various jackbooted thugs get to be online, the rest of them get the unmarked mass graves.” – Koby
Re: Unfortunately it’s terminal
So by your own logic you have stage four Twitter induced idiocy.
Re:
Hey, guy who is always here spouting the dumbest theories in order to get shot down by informed people every single day. How’s your badge?
Re: Re:
Obligatory Blazing Saddles link here.
He had an existential moment when he realized his tentacles are glowing blue in the dark.
Twitter: Locks reading posts behind an account and limits them even then, allowing those that pay more to read more.
Threats: Limits posting in an attempt to deal with the influx of scammers and spammers who joined alongside the avalanch of legitimate users.
Multiple news outlets: ‘They’re the same thing!’
Well that’s one way to out your news outlet as useless clickbait…
Just so I understand this: when I read tweets, Twitter makes money from ads … but Twitter wants me to read LESS tweets (rate limits) … so clearly Twitter wants to make LESS money?!?!
That seems like an, umm, “odd” business decision for a company that recently announced a 50% loss in revenue.
Re:
And yet we see the Musk-stans defend this as something brilliant. Fanaticism rots the brain.
Re:
It makes ‘more’ sense if looked at through two lenses:
1) The current CEO is a massive idiot who isn’t nearly as smart as he and his fans think he is.
2) He thinks that forcing people to pay for a negative-value ‘verification’ service is a good idea and is trying to force more people to do so by severely restricting non-paying accounts
Still stupid but it’s at least mostly internally consistent idiocy.