It appears that Instagram Threads, the latest rival of Twitter, is facing similar challenges with spam and rate limits. In response to increasing spam attacks, Threads has also had to tighten its rate limits. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, found this situation amusing and made a playful comment about it on Twitter.
Earlier this month, Twitter had to implement rate limits due to an extended outage caused by excessive data scraping and system manipulation. Initially, the limits were set at 6,000 posts daily for Verified users and 600 for unverified users. After user backlash, the limits were revised to 10,000 for Verified accounts, 1,000 for unverified accounts, and 500 for new unverified accounts. Musk later announced a further increase of 50% for Verified users, allowing them to view up to 15,000 posts.
Criticism arose over Twitter's approach to combatting spam and bots, with some pointing out that the problem might not have been as severe if the company hadn't laid off a significant portion of its engineering staff.
Now, even Meta's new app, Instagram Threads, is encountering issues with bots and spam. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, explained the problem in a post on Threads, acknowledging the increase in spam attacks. To address this, the app will tighten its rate limits, potentially impacting the experience of some active users unintentionally. However, unlike Twitter's strict limits, Mosseri indicated that users could reach out if they encounter these limitations, suggesting a willingness to work with legitimate users to resolve the issue.
In the replies to Mosseri's announcement, users complained about the worsening comment spam on Threads, with some posts receiving responses from bots, particularly gambling-related or "bait" messages. The presence of bots and spam is a concern for Threads, as it poses similar challenges to those faced by Twitter.