Jack Dorsey says 'running Twitter is hard' but tells Elon Musk it's 'critical to preserve the open internet' after data scraping crackdown

• Jack Dorsey said "running Twitter is hard" as users hit out at Elon Musk for imposing "rate limits."
• Dorsey said "I don't wish that stress upon anyone" after Musk capped how many tweets users can see.
• Musk said the limits were "temporary" and walked back on the numbers several times on Saturday.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown - at least that's how it seems Jack Dorsey is feeling.

The Twitter co-founder said Saturday that "running Twitter is hard" after Elon Musk sparked a backlash by announcing "rate limits" on viewing tweets. Many users criticized his decision after he announced the sudden changes.

"I don't wish that stress upon anyone," Dorsey tweeted. "I trust that the team is doing their best under the constraints they have, which are immense. It's easy to critique the decisions from afar … which I'm guilty of … but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will."

Musk said Saturday that Twitter was placing temporary tweet-viewing rate limits restricting how many posts users can see. He blamed the decision on "extreme levels" of data scraping from AI companies.

The Twitter CEO informed users of the changes hours after there were more than 13,000 reports of outages of the platform in the US and UK, per DownDetector.

Many users got a notification that read: "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again."

It came after Musk said Friday that users would need to sign in to view tweets and that it wouldn't show tweet preview when links are shared on other platforms.

Dorsey also said after the new restrictions were announced that he hopes Twitter will build on "censorship-resistant open protocols" such as Bitcoin, which he said was "good for all, and critical to preserve the open internet."

The former CEO stepped down in November 2021 after leading the company since 2006 and announced Parag Agrawal as his successor, who Musk fired when he acquired Twitter for $44 billion.

Musk walked back on the number of tweets accounts can view a day several times on Saturday. First he said verified accounts could read 6,000 posts per day, while unverified and newly created unverified accounts would be able to see just 600 and 300 posts per day.

A few hours later he said it was increasing the rate limits to "8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified" before changing the rules again and saying "now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k."

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from Insider, as it changed its policy for interacting with the media earlier this year.