Twitter owner Elon Musk announced a “temporary emergency measure” that requires users to log in to access tweets.
To see their favorite tweets, users must sign up or check-in.
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk tweeted.
He said that hundreds or more firms were “extremely aggressively” mining Twitter data, harming the user experience.
Musk has criticized AI startups like OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, for exploiting Twitter data to train their big language models.
“We absolutely will take legal action against those who stole our data & look forward seeing them in court, which is (optimistically) 2 to 3 years from now,” he said.
Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote to Microsoft (MSFT.O) CEO Satya Nadella in May to request an audit of the Windows developer’s use of Twitter’s content, saying the Windows developer broke an agreement.
The business has taken steps to attract advertisers who left under Musk’s control and increase subscription income by adding verification check marks to Twitter Blue.
Twitter declared earlier this month that it would focus on video, creator, and commerce relationships to go beyond digital advertising.
Twitter now charges third-party apps and researchers for API access.
