Re:Twitter now requires an account to view tweets
by saltminer on Saturday July 01, 2023 @03:56PM
(#36554389)
> A bot like this can make thousands to tens of thousands of requests per second.
You don't need to use a bot to do this, Twitter literally did this to themselves through their own buggy code https://sfba.social/@sysop408/110639474671754723
If Silicon Valley was still being produced, this would make for a great episode.
Suppose 1 million people are accessing Twitter at any given time. An actual person might only be making 1 request / second. That's 1 million requests / second.
Suppose there are 100 AI companies scraping Twitter. A bot like this can make thousands to tens of thousands of requests per second. That's an additional million requests / second.
There are probably more than 100 "AI" companies now, trying to train their own bespoke LLMs. They're popping up like weeds so I can totally see Twitter's load doubling or tripling recently. So sorry, I just don't get the skepticism. Sure it could be a cover for something else, but his actual stated reason seems totally possible.