This doesn’t do much to stop scrapers though. If accounts have a limited number of tweet views, the scrapers just create more accounts. Scrapers are gonna scrape, especially if there is some of that sweet AI money to be had. Trying to stop that is just another endless cat and mouse like fighting ad blocking or piracy.

Meanwhile this could do a lot to reduce user engagement, and thus hurt ad revenue even more. The panic over AI data doesn’t seem worth that. Perhaps there is another explanation for this. Or maybe this is just more tech company craziness, it sure seems to be catching at the moment.