Is Elon Musk removing Twitter from the Google index?

Since Friday, June 30, 2023, users without an active Twitter account can no longer see the content published on the microblogging service. Anyone who calls up a corresponding link, for example on Google or Facebook, ends up on a login screen instead.

German time on Saturday evening quit Twitter owner Musk then announced even more drastic restrictions on access to Twitter profiles and messages. The display of messages should also be restricted for Twitter users with an account.

Users had been complaining about disruptions and error messages since midday. They were reported as having exceeded their frequency limit, such as, among other things heise.de reports.

Musk initially limited this reading limit to 600 posts per day for non-paying users. Users with a newly opened account, for which they do not pay, were only allowed to see 300 posts per day. For Twitter Blue subscribers, the limit should have been 6,000.

In the course of the evening, Musk increased the limit several times due to complaints from users. Current status: 1,000 posts per day for Twitter users without a blue tick and with an existing account.

Musk explained the read restriction by saying that he wanted to take action against the “extreme extent of data skimming and system manipulation”. Above all, Musk has his sights set on the providers of so-called large language models and corresponding AI chatbots. These would use the Twitter messages as welcome free training data.

Critical voices see the new regulation as an attempt to increase the number of Twitter Blue subscribers. Because they are enormously preferred in the current models.

Regular Twitter users in particular should notice the restrictions. The limit is certainly reached quickly for many when scrolling through the timeline several times. For power users, Twitter can hardly be used effectively anymore.

As is not unusual with Musk’s quick shots, the changes also have unwanted negative consequences due to poor implementation. For one, with the current type of limitation, Twitter is launching DNS attacks against itself, as developer Sheldon Chang notes.

Namely when, after reaching the limit, attempts are made again and again to load new posts. Twitter sends around ten requests per second to itself. One of Musk’s goals, namely to limit the overload of the service, would thus be taken ad absurdum.

Also certainly not a desired consequence of the new Twitter restrictions: The Google bot is also standing in front of closed doors. He ends up on the login page just like all other users without their own account with the short message service.

Like expert Johannes Beus from the SEO analysis company Sistrix at Facebook explains, this means that data that Google can index is missing. “Currently, this affects new content and high-profile profiles that are frequently re-crawled,” says Beus. In the long run, however, all Twitter content is likely to be affected.

In any case, Musk was pleased that his restriction announcement set a new reach record (views) on Twitter. According to statistics, the tweet was viewed almost 500 million times in one day.