Instagram Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter, has been forced into implementing rate limits after bots descended onto the platform.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, confirmed the rate limits in a post on Threads.
Musk in typical fashion took a jab at Mosseri and Instagram, replying “lmaooo copy ????” to a screenshot of the announcement.
Lmaooo
Copy ????
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2023
Twitter imposed its rate limit on users on 1 July, citing extreme levels of data scraping from external organisations.
Verified users are able to view 15,000 tweets a day, while unverified counts are capped at 1,500 and new unverified accounts are limited to 1,000 posts per day.
Threads, owned by Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB), launched on 5 July and witnessed a record-breaking uptake surpassing 100mln users within five days.
However, keeping users on the platform proved difficult, with crypto venture capital firm a16z confirming that daily active users fell by around 40% after the first week.
Olivia Moore, a partner at a16z, believes importing users directly from Instagram to Threads doesn’t work as it removes the anonymity that platforms such as Twitter use to attract people onto the site.