New Twitter Rule Once Again Disrupts Life Saving Weather Warnings

A new Twitter rule limiting views could interfere
with meteorologists' efforts to track severe weather. 

Over the weekend our buddy Elon Musk over at Twitter decided to impose a new rule that limits how many tweets somebody can read in a single day.

So-called verified accounts have a limit of reading 10,000 posts a day while unverified have access to 1,000 posts. That's a change from the first announcement of this change on Saturday, when verified accounts could read 6,000 tweets per day, while unverified accounts could read 600. 

This will all seem pretty esoteric and unimportant to most people who have either a passing relationship with Twitter or none at all.  

But it caused an uproar for heavier Twitter users and caused anger and concern among those focused on weather on the platform.

Here's why: 

National Weather Service offices across the nation and other meteorologists use Twitter to track severe weather and damage reports from the public. These reports are extremely helpful in tracking storms, and also helps meteorologists learn forecasting lessons from particular storms. 

These weather offices often scroll through Twitter, looking for reports and updates so they can track severe weather.  This would make them hit their viewing limit pretty quickly. Many people, myself included, often use Twitter to report severe weather to the National Weather Service as it happens. 

I have a local for-instance of this new Twitter limit.  The National Weather Service office in South Burlington covers all of Vermont from Rutland and Windsor counties north and northern New York, including the Adirondacks. 

A serious flash flood hit areas in the mountains west of Plattsburgh Saturday night, and heavy rains threatened to cause flooding (but did not, really) in Franklin County, Vermont. 

This morning, the South Burlington National Weather Service office tweeted: "Twitter has established temporary rate limits that prevent us from seeing tweets from our users. If you need us for any information or to report flooding, please tag us directly and we will be able to see your tweet and respond. Thanks!"

Other National Weather Service offices said basically the same thing. 

During big weather emergencies, National Weather Service offices tweet out tons of information, and some people have come to rely on Twitter to receive weather warnings. This could hamper this habit. It's all the more reason why  you should have multiple ways to receive weather warnings, like the flash flood warnings I've seen in northern New York today. 

Musk of Twitter said he had to impose the limits because of data scrapers. Those are computer programs that comb through posts to extract useful data from the platform. 

Twitter and Musk says this limit is temporary, but we don't know how long it will last.  Musk, ever the mature, not-at-all like a fifth grader, always just sends poop emojis to any reporter that asks question. 

This isn't the first time Twitter messed with weather forecasting

Back in the spring, Twitter  (Musk) banned the dissemination of automated tweets.  The National Weather Service and other meteorologists use automated tweets to blast out weather warnings quickly and efficiently. 

Since people often use Twitter for weather warnings, this would be a bad thing.  Musk later reversed course and allowed the automated tweets again.