Twitter has applied a temporary limit to the number of tweets users can read in a day, owner Elon Musk anounced.

In a tweet of his own, Musk said unverified accounts are now limited to reading 600 posts a day.

For new unverified accounts, the number is 300. Meanwhile, accounts with “verified” status are currently limited to 6,000 posts a day

Musk said the temporary limits were to address “extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”.

Data scraping refers to a process that sees information pulled out of a website and imported into another programme. Mr Musk did not give further details, or explain what was meant by system manipulation in this context.

Mr Musk later added that the reading limits would “soon” rise to 800 tweets per day for unverified accounts, 400 for new unverified accounts and 8,000 for verified accounts.

On Friday, those trying to access Twitter were told they had to login to view the content. The move was a “temporary emergency measure”, Mr Musk said at the time.

He claimed that the social media platform was “getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users