Want to view tweets? Twitter makes log-in mandatory in a bid to combat data loss

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Elon Musk ceded the CEO role to Linda Yaccarino, but the microblogging app is still undergoing significant transformations. Twitter will now require users to have an account if they want to see, like, or retweet other tweets. Earlier users could view tweets without having to log in, but now it is mandatory to either log in to their existing account or sign up for a new one if they wish to access tweets.

The microblogging website’s news handle, Twitter daily news handle announced the new development. “Twitter's web version no longer allows users to browse without logging in. All URLs redirect to the signup page.

This is believed to be a measure to make it harder for scrapers to take Twitter's data like ChatGPT's web browsing plugin has been doing.” The tweet went viral gaining 2.3 million views. Taking to Twitter, Musk described this change as a “temporary emergency measure”, and revealed a lot of data was getting “pillaged” which affected the user experience. The tweet went viral on the microblogging site and gained 1.5 million views, and 14K likes.

A tech enthusiast wrote, that this change would actually improve security, as people now won't be able to access the tweets of those who had blocked them. “For what it's worth it actually prevents users from getting around the Block feature. Before, if a user blocked you could just open an incognito window or separate browser and paste the URL.

Now that won't work,” he wrote. In several interviews, Musk expressed concern that several companies including OpenAI and ChatGPT were using Twitter data to improve their language models. He threatened legal action against anyone who stole data.