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It started like any other outage: unexplained error messages that told users they had hit their “rate limit”, and Twitter posts refusing to load. But as the weekend progressed, it became clear that these weren’t just any old technical problems, but rather issues that could define the future not only of Twitter but of the internet. Elon Musk took to Twitter on Saturday and announced that he would be introducing a range of changes “to address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation”. Users would only be able to see a limited number of posts, and those who are not logged in wouldn’t be able to see the site at all. That decision triggered those error messages, since users were hitting the “rate limit” that meant they were requesting too many posts for Twitter to be able to handle. The new limits – apparently temporary, though still in effect – meant that users were being rationed on how many tweets they were able to see, and would see frustrating and unexplained messages when they actually hit that limit. In many ways it was yet another perplexing and worrying decision by Mr Musk, whose stewardship of Twitter has lurched from scandal to scandal since he took over the company in October last year. (He appointed a chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, last month, but is still seemingly deciding, executing and communicating the company’s strategy.) But something seems different about the chaos this time around. For one, it is not one of the many content policy issues or potentially hostile ways of encouraging people to sign up for Twitter’s premium service that have marked Mr Musk’s leadership of Twitter so far; for another, it seemed to be part of a broader issue that is rattling the whole internet, and which Twitter might only be one symptom. It remains unclear whether Mr Musk’s latest decision really has anything to do with scraping by artificial intelligence systems, as he claimed. But the explanation certainly makes sense: AI systems require vast corpuses of text and images to be trained on, and the companies that make them have generated that by scraping and regurgitating the text that can be easily found across the web. Every time someone wants to load a web page, their computer makes a request to that company’s servers, which then provide the data that can be reconstructed on the user’s web browser. If you want to load Elon Musk’s Twitter account, for instance, you direct your browser to the relevant address and it will show his Twitter posts, pulled down from the internet. That comes with costs, of course, including the price of running those servers and the bandwidth required to be sending vast amounts of data quickly across the internet. For the most part on the modern internet, that cost has been covered by also sending along some advertising, or requiring that people sign up for a subscription to see the content they are asking for. AI companies that are scraping those sites make frequent requests for that data, however, and quickly. And since the system is automated, they are not able to look at ads or pay for subscriptions, meaning that companies are not paid for the content they are providing. That issue looks to be growing across the internet. Companies that host text discussions, such as Twitter, are very aware that they might be serving up the same data that could one day render them obsolete, and are keen to at least make some money from that process. It also looks to be some of the reason behind the recent fallout on Reddit, too. That site is especially useful for feeding to an AI – it includes very human and very helpful answers to the kinds of questions that users might ask an AI system – and the company is very aware that it is, once again, giving up the information that might also be used to overtake it. To try and solve that, it recently announced that it would be charging large amounts of access to its API, which serves as the interface through which automated systems can hoover up that data. It was at least partly intended as a way to generate money from those AI companies, though it also had the effect of making it too expensive for third-party Reddit clients – which also rely on that API – to keep running, and the most popular ones have since shut down. There is good reason to think that this will keep happening. The web is increasingly being hoovered up by the same AI systems that will eventually be used to further degrade the experience of using it: Twitter is, in effect, being used to train the same bots that will one day post misleading and annoying messages all over Twitter. Every website that hosts text, images or video could face the same problems, as AI companies look to build up their datasets and train up their systems. As such, all of the internet could become more like Mr Musk’s Twitter did over the weekend: actively hostile to actual users, as it attempts to keep the fake users away. But just as likely is that it is Mr Musk’s explanation for why the site went down conveniently chimes with the zeitgeist, and helpfully shifts blame to the AI companies that he has already voiced significant skepticism about. The truth may be that Twitter – which has fired the vast majority of its staff, including those in its engineering teams – might finally be running into problems with infrastructure that happen when fewer people are around to keep the site online. Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, is perhaps the best qualified person to suggest that is the case. He said that Mr Musk’s argument for the new limits “doesn’t pass the sniff test” and instead suggested that it was the result of someone mistakenly breaking the rate limiter and then having that accident passed off by Mr Musk as being intentional, whether he knows that or not. “For anyone keeping track, this isn’t even the first time they’ve completely broken the site by bumbling around in the rate limiter,” Mr Roth wrote on Twitter rival Bluesky. “There’s a reason the limiter was one of the most locked down internal tools. Futzing around with rate limits is probably the easiest way to break Twitter.” Mr Roth also said that Twitter has long been aware that it was being scraped – and that it was OK with it. He called it the “open secret of Twitter data access” and said the company considered it “fine”. And he too suggested that the events of the weekend could be a hint about what is coming to the internet, offering an entirely different alternative. It’s not Twitter, Reddit and other companies who should really be upset about what is going on, he suggested. “There’s some legitimacy to Twitter and Reddit being upset with AI companies for slurping up social data gratis in order to train commercially lucrative models,” Mr Roth said. “But they should never forget that it’s not *their* data — it’s ours. A solution to parasitic AI needs to be user-centric, not profit-centric.” Read More Twitter to stop TweetDeck access for unverified users Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week – report Twitter rival Bluesky halts sign-ups after huge surge in demand Twitter is breaking more and more Twitter rival sees huge increase in users as Elon Musk ‘destroys his site’ What does Twitter’s rate-limiting restriction mean?

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Freshly cut roses. Sumptuous Marie Antoinette-style birthday cakes. Vintage Liberty dresses in Strawberry Thief fabric. Shetland ponies. These are some of the ingredients of my Instagram posts featuring my kids. I wouldn’t call myself a “sharent” by any means – someone who overshares their children’s intimate lives on social media in one long, parental “humblebrag”. But whenever I do post, it is picture-perfect. My kids look like they’ve walked straight out of a fairytale. But is it naff? Like tablescaping your kids? A form of digital narcissism? Is it, in its own unique way, a parental kind of “thirst trap”? To an extent, I’m luring others into a fantasy that doesn’t exist. I like to project a wonderfully idyllic life as a single mum... when quite frankly, it isn’t. It’s like when people try to woo their ex-partners back by posting shots of themselves half-naked and having the best time of their lives, despite crying into their pillow heartbroken all day and night. Some mums are professionals at posting perfect dreamy shots of their kids. Look no further than Carrie Johnson, Tamara Ecclestone, Stacey Solomon, and Kate and Rio Ferdinand. For celebrities and influencers, a picture-perfect ideal is the norm on social media – there are lots of cream interiors and matching Christmas jumpers. They might be promoting a homeware brand, or tagging a pram they got for free. Even when it’s tastefully done, like the former PM’s wife’s Instagram, it always gives the impression that motherhood is wondrous. That life is one big, happy Timotei advert. Even when celebrities try to be more candid, it doesn’t work. Mum-of-two Millie Mackintosh, formerly of Made in Chelsea, recently posted a “toddler tornado dump” on her Instagram. “I feel like it’s so easy to always share the nice, polished, life,” she wrote. “Well, today, I’m here to break that pattern.” The glimpse “into the delightful chaos” of Mackintosh’s maternal life included photos of a toothbrush and toothpaste on a bathroom basin, a bedroom littered with hair bows, and a make-up drawer with a few brown concealer stains on it. Really? Is that as bad as motherhood gets? For me, it’s simply more interesting to post magical rather than mundane shots. But why on earth do I want to present my kids as if they’re living in one long, tasteful pastel-coloured dream, where everything looks enchanting? No messy hair. No sleep deprivation. No kids bored out of their minds. I don’t require a filter, either – I’m already looking at life through rose-tinted spectacles, and expecting everyone else to do the same. But am I totally deluded? And, more than anything, could it be damaging to my children? Dr Charlotte Armitage, who is currently the duty-of-care psychologist on ITV’s Big Brother, has big concerns. “First of all, it’s impacting the relationship between the parent and a child because the relationship is contingent on the creation of these images and the number of likes that follow,” she says, adding that when you are “truly happy” with your situation, “you don’t tend to post perfect images”. It’s more important to ask ourselves the question of why we feel the need to present this kind of picture-perfect image of ourselves to the world. Is it because, in reality, we are discontented with our lives? Dr Charlotte Armitage, psychologist As parents, she continues, we are modelling behaviours to our children. “They learn by imitation – if mum is taking photos and seeking validation from likes, the child starts to become validated by these likes themselves and will develop an external focus of control; they will learn that validation comes from what others think of them. This is unhealthy because, throughout life, a child’s self-esteem and self-worth become based on what others think about them rather than how they feel about themselves.” The key, she says, is realising we shouldn’t use social media to fulfil our self-worth. “It’s more important to ask ourselves the question of why we feel the need to present this kind of picture-perfect image of ourselves to the world,” she says. “Is it because, in reality, we are discontented with our lives?” According to research, the average child today has had their image put on social media 1,300 times before the age of 13 – I can see this trajectory for my kids unless I put on the brakes. There are already widespread concerns over the data. In France, an anti-sharing bill continues to be discussed in the country’s senate, and parents could potentially be banned from sharing photos of their children on social media. It could also become mandatory for influencers to admit if a photo or video they posted was retouched or filtered. There is controversy over whether pictures of kids should even be posted online at all, as many are too young to even give permission. How will they feel about the spread of their image in the future? What happens if their identity is stolen – or worse, used by paedophiles? Does it promote a distorted reality of motherhood, compared with which other “normal” mums feel inadequate? And can it backfire on the parents when children’s rights in the digital era are not honoured? “Children tend to be frustrated or critical of the way their parents share images of them,” says Professor Sonia Livingstone, from the department of media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “Not because they are made to seem ‘perfect’ but because they can be embarrassed, even shamed, in the eyes of their peers. Meanwhile, parents feel hugely under pressure in many ways, both to be perfect parents and also because such images leave parents competing with each other and isolated in their own seemingly inadequate lives.” Dr Cosmo Duff Gordon is the founder of leading addictions clinic Start2Stop, and a psychologist in private practice at Chelsea Recovery Associates. He says that in his 20-year career as a psychologist, he’s “never had a parent sit in front of him and say ‘I’m addicted to Instagram,’” but that’s not because social media addiction doesn’t exist. He puts it largely down to “denial” – “not least since the use of social media can involve so many of the processes that usually characterise classic alcohol or drug addiction”. Denial being the number one culprit. “Obvious ones might be obsession, compulsion, capture of attentional focus and loss of control,” he says. “More subtly, social media use can involve the same sort of self-medication, or escape from reality, that addiction offers – and being a parent is hard. That’s why drifting into a fantasy land can be a relief from the daily grind of motherhood.” Parenting expert Hannah Keeley – aka “America’s #1 Mom Coach” – is more upbeat about mums posting potentially inauthentic photos of their kids. “The hardest truth to accept is that there are some mums who are actually professionalising motherhood to this level,” she says. “Not that they have achieved perfection, but they take pride in their performance as mums and use social media as a way to confirm that to themselves and boost their confidence to encourage their efforts. Should these mums also be obligated to ensure that all mums feel good about themselves, whether or not they have invested in their career to this level? Mums don’t have to be responsible for other mums’ perceptions.” After great debate and reflection, I’ve decided I’m happy with my Insta posts. They might be driven by my background, where my sister and I ran around in white nightdresses as if we had starring roles in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Or because I was conditioned to believe that how we look – even how thin we were – equalled self-worth. I’m not setting myself up to be a supermum. I don’t look at how many likes I get. It’s true that us mums also need to share our parenting experiences honestly, to let other mums know they are not alone. But for now, I’m not doing a U-turn – I’m just living the fairytale dream. Read More My daughter’s horsey hobby makes her happy, but our home now hums If poachers make the best gamekeepers, do siblings make the best babysitters? 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