Twitter has temporarily limited the number of tweets users can view in a day, according to Elon Musk, after thousands of users encountered difficulties accessing the website.

Mr. Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion (€40 billion) in October, revealed on Saturday that verified accounts will only be able to read 6,000 posts every day.

According to him, new unverified accounts are only allowed to read 300 posts per day and unverified accounts can only read 600 posts per day.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.

In the UK, a peak of 5,126 people complained of problems accessing the site at 4.12 pm on Saturday, according to the website Downdetector – which tracks online outages.

In the US, some 7,461 people complained of issues as of 4.15 pm Irish time, the site notes.

#Twitter and RIP Twitter began trending as frustrated users were faced with a message saying “Rate limit exceeded. Please wait a few moments then try again”.

After taking over Twitter, Mr. Musk laid off some 80% of its 8,000 global staff – and admitted it resulted in the platform losing a large amount of its functionality.

He also oversaw the scrapping of legacy “blue ticks”, which verified a user’s identity and were replaced by a paid-for subscription called Twitter Blue. High-profile figures and celebrities said the move leaves the platform open to imposters and disinformation.

Users who pay €11 a month, or €132 annually, receive the blue tick and can make longer tweets up to 10,000 characters.

Other select features available only to subscribers include non-fungible token (NFT) profile pictures, making changes to published tweets, and seeing around 50 percent fewer ads.

Twitter has said that the service “elevates quality conversations”.

Entrepreneur Mr. Musk, before buying the platform, revealed plans to turn it into “X, the everything app”.

In December, just weeks after the takeover, Mr. Musk tweeted: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.”

The pledge came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in a poll Mr. Musk created and promised to abide by. In May, Mr. Musk confirmed that advertising executive Linda Yaccarino, formerly of NBCUniversal, was replacing him as Twitter’s chief executive.