As Twitter imposes more limits on its users' activity, experts say the social media platform will become a less reliable source of information and more susceptible to polarization ahead of Indonesia’s general election next year.

In the past week, Twitter users around the world thought the social media platform had gone down for a while. But as it turned out, a new rule was put in place to limit their activity, courtesy of Twitter’s owner Elon Musk.

Musk placed a limit on Saturday such that unverified users could only read 600 posts a day, while verified users, who pay for Twitter’s premium subscription, could read 6,000 posts.

Bandung-based copywriter Kenny Andriana is among the users affected by the viewing limit. Kenny was scrolling through the app casually last Saturday when he noticed he could not see any posts.

“I treat Twitter like a newspaper, I open it every day to look for anything that’s happening in the world,” Kenny told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday, feeling agitated after getting hit by the viewing limit.

The hashtag #RateLimitExceeded and its variations were trending worldwide for several days, gaining thousands of tweets from those experiencing the same thing. The limit has now been extended to 1,000 posts for unverified users.

“A fear set in that day. Election year is coming and Twitter is the platform that many people use. What are we going to do?’” he said.

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