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As @rustybrick reported this AM, tweets are dropping out of the SERPs based on the latest changes on the platform. Search visibility is dropping, and spot-checking those rankings reveals those tweets or Twitter accounts are not ranking anymore: seroundtable.com/twitter- google... Organic Research: twitter.com US 58.5M Glenn Gabe @glenngabe Filter by keyword Overview Positions Position Changes Competitors Pages Subdomains All Positions Organic SERP Features Keywords 17.6M -0.56% Estimated Traffic Trend Notes ✓ 200M UK 11.7M 100M OM JP 11.5M Jun 3 Jun 5 Device: Desktop ✓ Date: Jul 2, 2023 ✓ Q Pos: Top 20 x Volume ✓ KD Jun 8 Traffic 108.7M-23.04% 1 Jun 10 Jun 12 8:04 AM Jul 3, 2023 · 20.1K Views Intent v Jun 15 Currency: USD SERP features v Jun 17 Traffic Cost $57.8M-31.16% Jun 19 Advanced filters v 19 Retweets 7 Quotes 40 Likes 5 Bookmarks Jun 22 Jun 24 1M 6M 1Y 2Y Jun 26 Jun 29 1 Export to PDF X All time Jul 1 :

Ben Collins @oneunderscore___· Jul 1 Is he broke? This is what broke people do. 323 6,190 66.4K 8 ₁2.2M AutoGolpe Chatbot @torinrozzelle. Jul 1 This is absolutely related to twitter not paying their Google Cloud bills. enyuuyen More platform instability could be in Twitter's near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company's Google Cloud servers. Platformer reports Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract's June 30th renewal date. Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google's infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is "running behind schedule," putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company acquired in 2018 to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline. 1 488 ₁175.3K 1,473 ←] ←] : :

Dion Almaer @dalmaer CEOS: "hmm Elon is running Twitter great with a small percentage of the engineers. It's going well... we should consider.." On Blind: 14:10 blind gg551015 2h 9:04 AM. Jul 2, 2023 · 2.4M Views all ☎ 心公司 Help Hi...this is embarrassing but are there any former web engineers who would be willing to help debug an issue? Preferably any one who worked on home TL or have extensive knowledge of URT. Please let me know 3,844 Retweets 288 Quotes 12.3K Likes 835 Bookmarks 000 :

ARS MARS: @Iucigao oh my f------ god google is booting twitter cause they aren't paying for server space anymore so elon is lying about these limits happening because he wants people to pay to see more this site is f------ doomed More platform instability could be in Twitter's near future. In 2018, Twitter signed a $1 billion contract with Google to host some of its services on the company's Google Cloud servers. Platformer reports Twitter recently refused to pay the search giant ahead of the contract's June 30th renewal date. Twitter is reportedly rushing to move as many services off of Google's infrastructure before the contract expires, but the effort is "running behind schedule," putting some tools, including Smyte, a platform the company acquired in 2018 to bolster its moderation capabilities, in danger of going offline. 8:00 AM - Jul 2, 2023 · 2,147 Views : If Twitter can't migrate the system to its own servers before the end of the month, Platformer suggests a shutdown would greatly impact the company's ability to combat spam and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Before Saturday, Smyte had been already showing signs of strain, following Elon Musk's deep cuts to Twitter's workforce. In December, Musk reportedly asked Twitter's trust and safety team why the automated system hadn't caught a Twitter Blue user who had been impersonating him to pump a crypto scam. The team told Musk the system had been unstable for a week, crashing "at least once a day." 19 Retweets 2 Quotes 31 Likes 4 Bookmarks

ACACION It's an entire day, Michael, how many posts do you need to read, 600?

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About

Twitter's Public Access Restriction Controversy refers to Twitter's controversial decision to temporarily withdraw the capacity to browse the website without making a Twitter account and being logged in (also known as a public profile). News about Twitter's policy requiring a Twitter account to view tweets broke in late June 2023, with various users reacting to the event and speculating about what it means for the future of the platform. Reactions to the news touched on discussions about the perceived enshittification of social media and the internet. Possible unintended consequences of the move include the inability to access archived versions of deleted tweets and the inability to view a tweet by a blocked account on a separate incognito tab. On June 30th, Musk then announced that the new rules about needing an account to view tweets are temporary, with no further dates specified.

Background

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[1] account @disclosetv posted a tweet that read, "JUST IN – Twitter has completely disabled public profiles. To see tweets, you now have to log in to the platform," gathering over 7,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Developments

Twitter View Limit

On July 1st, 2023, Twitter^[7] owner Elon Musk wrote that "to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation," Twitter had applied temporary limits to the number of posts users are able to view daily. The change limited the number of posts for verified accounts to 6,000 per day, for unverified accounts to 600 per day and for unverified to 300 per day.

Elon Musk ✔ ✔ @elonmusk To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we've applied the following temporary limits: - Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day - Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day - New unverified accounts to 300/day 1:01 PM · Jul 1, 2023 · 110.9M Views

Nitter Discontinuation

During the development of the aforementioned various restrictions, many people switched to the free-to-use front-end website Nitter^[15], created back in 2019, as an alternative method to access Twitter posts, threads and accounts. However, on January 29th, 2024, following Twitter's decision to disable guest accounts, which were an essential part of the front-end mechanism, Nitter's main developer, Zedeus, announced, at first with a laconic message on GitHub^[16], the immediate and definitive discontinuation of the project^[17]; this effectively shut down the only remaining viable alternative to logging in to Twitter.

Online Reactions

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[2] user @TimSweeneyEpic posted a tweet commenting on how he perceives the internet to be increasingly restrictive and "broken," gathering over 10,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). The user received a reply from Elon Musk^[3] in which he said that the move to restrict access to Twitter was undertaken to stop data scraping. The tweet gathered over 14,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Tim Sweeney @TimSweeney Epic The internet feels increasingly broken. News sites are paywalled or account walled, Reddit is nag walled, Google search spams ads and SEO to the point of uselessness, and now Twitter is account walled. Web browsing feels horrible now. 3:20 PM Jun 30, 2023 2.6M Views 980 Retweets 148 Quotes 10.1K Likes 303 Bookmarks :

Also on June 30th, Twitter^[4] user @uwukko posted a tweet that read, "twitter no longer lets you view tweets without an account. / all archival tools don't work anymore. unauthenticated downloaders/clients/tools/etc also no longer work. / this was probably done to stop unpaid data scraping, but ended up hurting literally everyone else." The post gathered over 14,000 likes in a day (seen below).

twitter no longer lets you view tweets without an account.all archival tools don't work anymore. unauthenticated downloaders/clients/tools/etc also no longer work.this was probably done to stop unpaid data scraping, but ended up hurting literally everyone else. pic.twitter.com/FZ0sMErDVw

— wukko (@uwukko) June 30, 2023

On June 30th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @FireSisterBee posted a tweet that read, "Checking blocked accounts on incognito is over. Sending twitter links over other messenger apps is now over aswell. Just sharing something on twitter with people that don’t have an account because they are mentally stable is over too," gathering over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Also on June 30th, Twitter^[6] user @nearcyan posted a tweet that read, "with the AI scraping wars finally heating up, I expect the web to become less open and usable / more things like reddit forcing their app, twitter blocking users without an account, discord being unindexable / unsure of any good solutions to this atm," gathering over 600 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Karen 玉子焼き @FireSisterBee Checking blocked accounts on incognito is over. Sending twitter links over other messenger apps is now over aswell. Just sharing something on twitter with people that don't have an account because they are mentally stable is over too Disclose.tv @disclosetv. 16h JUST IN - Twitter has completely disabled public profiles. To see tweets, you now have to log in to the platform. 9:07 AM Jun 30, 2023 · 47.4K Views 208 Retweets 5 Quotes 1,437 Likes 61 Bookmarks

near @nearcyan with the Al scraping wars finally heating up, I expect the web to become less open and usable more things like reddit forcing their app, twitter blocking users without an account, discord being unindexable unsure of any good solutions to this atm 4:05 PM Jun 30, 2023 211.2K Views 62 Retweets 10 Quotes 675 Likes 50 Bookmarks

On July 3rd, Twitter^[14] user @glenngabe noted that Twitter's decision to disable public profiles also led to tweets dropping out of Google search results due to Google's inability to crawl through tweets freely (seen below).

Temporary Measure Announcement

Later on June 30th, 2023, Elon Musk took to his Twitter^[8] to reply to a tweet expressing concern about the change by reassuring them that the measure to limit public profiles was temporary. The tweet reads, "Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!" The post gathered over 15,000 likes in a day (seen below).

Twitter Defaulting on Google Cloud Bill Theory

On June 10th, 2023, Platformer published an article about how Twitter has reportedly failed to pay its Google Cloud services bill and was "scrambling" to move services off Google Cloud before the contract ended on June 30th.^[9] Business Insider^[10] published an article on June 22nd, saying that Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, worked on reconciling Twitter's relationship with Google by restarting bill payments. Various Twitter users noted the timeline of the public profile issue and Twitter's rate limit issue and theorized about how Twitter may have defaulted on its Google Cloud bill.

On July 1st, 2023, Twitter user @oneunderscore__ posted a tweet that read, "Is he broke? This is what broke people do," gathering over 60,000 likes in two days. Twitter^[12] user @torinrozzelle replied to the tweet citing the possibility of Twitter having defaulted on its bills (seen below, left). An earlier June 29th tweet by Twitter user @RMac18 noted that Twitter CEO Yaccarino had purportedly spoken with the head of Google Cloud to resolve the issue (seen below, right).

Ryan Mac (did not pay for this blue check) @RMac18 Yaccarino has aided other parts of the business, like with Twitter's various unpaid bills. In early June, the company owed $42 million for Google Cloud services. She helped convince Musk to pay. Much more in our story (w/ @tiffkhsu & @BenMullin): nytimes.com /2023/06/29/tec... Ms. Yaccarino has made progress in some areas, including helping to mend Twitter's relationship with Google. That relationship frayed under Mr. Musk when Twitter partly stopped paying Google for cloud computing services. Twitter owed Google more than $42 million in unpaid invoices and was trying to stop its use of Google's products by the end of June, according to an internal memo obtained by The Times. Ms. Yaccarino spoke this month to Thomas Kurian, the head of Google Cloud, to resolve the issue and ordered the bill paid, a person familiar with the conversation said. She also persuaded Mr. Musk to embrace the new developments, the person said. 10:30 AM. Jun 29, 2023 · 34.8K Views 33 Retweets 17 Quotes 216 Likes 1 Bookmark :

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References

^[1] Twitter – disclosetv

^[2] Twitter – TimSweeneyEpic

^[3] Twitter – ElonMusk

^[4] Twitter – uwukko

^[5] Twitter – FireSisterBee

^[6] Twitter – nearcyan

^[7] Twitter – @elonmusk

^[8] Twitter – elonmusk

^[9] Platformer – Twitter Stiffs Google

^[10] Business Insider – Twitter Starts Paying Google Bill

^[11] Twitter – oneunderscore__

^[12] Twitter – torinrozzelle

^[13] Twitter – RMac18

^[14] Twitter – glenngabe

^[15] Nitter (desactivated website)

^[16] GitHub – Nitter issue n°1155

^[17] AlternativeTo – "":https://alternativeto.net/news/2024/1/privacy-oriented-x-front-end-nitter-is-shutting-down-following-changes-to-guest-accounts/

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