For some bizarre reason (OK, ) Twitter is becoming less useful almost every day. In its latest misstep, it appears the service will no longer allow people who aren’t logged in to see any tweets.
Until now, logged-out users have still been able to check out tweets and user profiles, but at least for now, they’ll have to either sign up for an account or plug in their credentials to see whatever Twitter owner Elon Musk was tweeting today. discovered the issue, which Engadget has confirmed across multiple browsers and devices.
Twitter won’t confirm whether this was a technical error or a deliberate decision, as one of Musk’s first moves after taking over the company was to nearly wipe out its communications team. Logged out users have not been able to use Twitter’s search function in any case.
It’s unclear what kind of impact moves like this will have on things like Google being able to include tweets in its search results. This could also prove a roadblock for services that scrape data from public platforms like Twitter.
Making tweets visible only to logged in users won’t necessarily prompt people to sign up for an account. If someone wants to share a tweet with a non-Twitter user, they may now be more likely to send a screenshot than a link, perhaps making the non-user less likely to join the service.
Researchers have found that most American adults are after Musk bought the service. You might think that Twitter would do what it could to get more eyeballs on tweets and ads, given that its ad revenue is . Putting up a barrier between potential new users and content may not be the wisest way to go about it.