Thousands of people lodged complaints about issues accessing Twitter on Saturday after owner Elon Musk limited most users to viewing a maximum of 600 tweets a day.

Musk described the restrictions as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the site.

The service disruptions started a day after the social media platform began requiring people to log on to the site in order to view tweets and profiles.

It is a change in Twitter’s longtime practice allowing all comers to view the chatter on what Musk has frequently touted as the word’s digital town square since buying it for $44 billion (U.S.) last year.