Elon Musk finds it “galling” to have to put expensive servers online to enable AI startups to scrape data from Twitter, which he owns. So he has set limits on the number of posts per day a Twitter user can view, in order to foil AI bots. To ordinary users those limits may seem high – 500, 1,000 and 10,000 posts a day respectively for new unverified users, established unverified users and verified users. But addicts have been complaining nonetheless, and one former Twitter executive, fired by Musk in February, said the cap was a result of his hubris and “no pushback” – no one left at Twitter with the courage to tell the boss that limiting customers’ access to your product defies basic business logic. But does it? Isn’t that exactly what he did for years at Tesla, building the world’s most valuable car company with no advertising at all by enforcing scarcity of output? The analogy isn’t perfect but it is worth noting that Musk has done well by breaking rules. Tesla delivered a record 466,140 cars in the second quarter of the year.
