On Saturday, Twitter implemented a limitation on the amount of tweets its users can view.
Elon Musk posted a tweet in which he said that unverified users were limited to viewing 1,000 tweets per day while verified users could look at up to 10,000.
Individuals started posting screenshots of notifications informing them that they had surpassed their daily limit of tweets.
Elon Musk was taking an action that seemed unimaginable for a social media platform - he was curtailing user involvement.
Advertising executives have been perplexed by the decision.
This is only a piece of the puzzle in Elon Musk's larger confrontation with AI firms.
The main source of income for Twitter is advertising, similar to Meta and Google.
When users access the platform, advertisements are shown to them. As the duration of their time on Twitter increases, the amount of ads they encounter increases too. It's a straightforward relationship. That is the business model.
Elon Musk has typically not utilized advertising. Tesla is widely known for not engaging in advertising.
In 2019, he expressed his dislike of advertising via a tweet.
He has, however, invested in a corporation that completely depends on it.
Elon Musk is determined to establish new sources of income.
He believes that social media companies should not be beholden to advertisers when it comes to moderation, this being more than a business decision.
Advertisers have the capability to take their money away from Twitter.
Advertisers are not eager to have their advertisements appear alongside racist or extremist material. Hence, the main source of income for Twitter also has an effect on how much "free speech" is permitted on the platform.
In April, Mr Musk informed me that the majority of advertisers had resumed their ads on Twitter following his takeover, after they had initially halted them.
Yet, Mr Musk has another approach to make Twitter a viable business.
He desires for Twitter to monetize the huge quantity of data it has.
Twitter and Reddit provide a wealth of data - made up of hundreds of billions of conversations between people - which AI businesses find invaluable.
LLMs are capable of learning from interactions and figuring out how to reply to questions with a more human-like approach.
Platforms such as Twitter and Reddit desire to be compensated for allowing their data to be used in this manner.
In April, Steve Huffman, Reddit's chief executive, expressed to the New York Times his discontentment with the activities of artificial intelligence companies.
He declared that the Reddit corpus of data was highly valuable, but he was adamant that those enormous companies should not get it for nothing.
At about the same moment, Elon Musk declared that Microsoft was "taking advantage of the Twitter database, taking away its ability to generate revenue (by erasing ads) and then trading our information to others".
It was evident on Saturday that Mr Musk was experiencing a great deal of annoyance.
He stated that data was being pilfered.
He remarked that nearly every organization that works with AI, from small businesses to the most significant companies globally, were exploiting large quantities of data.
Consequently, Elon Musk is attempting to limit utilization in order to avoid his data being utilized by LLMs. He is desirous of negotiating with AI enterprises, so as to obtain remuneration in exchange for the material they use.
It can be suggested that there might be additional elements in the mix, and this harks back to another one of his initiatives to reduce Twitter's reliance on advertisement income.
Mr Musk is eager for people to purchase Twitter.
For months, he has been attempting to motivate people to subscribe to Twitter Blue. By offering a blue tick and verification to Twitter Blue members and removing verification from those who don't pay, he is using a combination of incentives and disincentives.
Despite Elon Musk's high anticipation, Twitter Blue has not been the success he had expected; users have not been signing up in large numbers.
It may be that he is attempting to discover a different method to persuade people to make purchases. In the future, will it be necessary to pay a recurrent charge if you desire unrestrained tweeting?
No matter what Mr Musk is pondering, it is evident that hindering tweets is not favorable for advertisers.
Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, informed Reuters that the limits for users and advertisers, who have already been affected by the "chaos" at Twitter, are "remarkably bad".
The perplexity of Elon Musk's provisions is potentially at its greatest when examining his recent appointing of Linda Yaccarino as Twitter's CEO. Yaccarino, a previous advertising professional, was taken on for the role.
It is believed that she has ambitious plans about how Twitter can generate more revenue - such as full-screen video advertisements and attempting to get more famous people to use the platform.
The restricted tweets limit her job potential, as fewer viewers of the posts results in decreased advertiser spending.
Furthermore, Meta exists.
Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly releasing a Twitter-like app, called Threads, sometime this summer. It is not likely that there will be limitations on its feed or how many posts can be seen since that does not fit with the Meta way of operation.
Elon Musk is a businessman of great success, and he legitimately complains about AI companies misusing his data. However, his recent actions are puzzling..
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Check out this 90-second synopsis of Elon Musk's BBC interview!
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