Twitter walks back some login requirements

It seems that Twitter is already walking back some of the unpopular decisions it made over the past few days.

On Wednesday, Twitter users began noticing that some content was once again accessible to visitors who were not logged in to an account.

Mashable has tested out multiple different Twitter links and found visitors can access a specific tweet with direct links to that post. Clicking on a profile will also bring visitors to a user’s page and their bio and follower and following count will all be visible. 

Users have also reported that tweet links are once again showing content embeds on messaging platforms like Slack and Apple’s Messages app. Mashable was also able to access the Explore page with trending topics by clicking on it in the sidebar on a tweet page.

However, there’s still a lot of content blocked for visitors unless they’re logged in to a registered Twitter account. Visitors cannot directly access any profile page or the Explore page by simply going to the URL in their web browser unless they log in.

In addition, tweet links accessed by visitors who aren’t logged in will only show that tweet. Visitors still cannot view any replies to that tweet unless they log in. 

Furthermore, if the tweet a visitor opens is a reply to another tweet or one tweet in a longer thread, none of those other tweets will show up. So, if a visitor opens up a tweet reply while logged out, they won’t have any context as to what the user was replying to.

Even accessing Twitter’s homepage at Twitter.com(opens in a new tab) forwards visitors directly to the login page that appears when trying to access pages that are blocked for individuals who aren’t logged in to a Twitter account.

As Mashable previously reported, Twitter made the decision to lock out visitors who aren’t logged in to an account on the Friday before the July 4th weekend. At the time, Twitter owner Elon Musk said it was to stop web scrapers and platform manipulation, but the move was roundly criticized by users.

However, Musk and company didn’t stop there. On Saturday, Twitter made the decision to limit the number of tweets even logged-in users are able to view per day. Users who pay for Twitter Blue were allotted a larger number of tweets that they could access. Then on Monday, Twitter launched a new, more limited version of TweetDeck, its app for power users. The company also announced that in 30 days, TweetDeck would be limited to Twitter Blue subscribers only.

Musk announced that each of these limitations were only “temporary” (minus the TweetDeck announcement). Twitter had already expanded the number of tweets users could see over the weekend, but still kept the limits in place.

Now, Twitter is allowing visitors who aren’t logged in to see more content as well. The decision to roll that limitation back before the others likely has to do with a few things. For one, Meta is about to launch its Twitter competitor, Threads. In addition, in blocking visitors, Twitter was also locking out search engines from indexing their content. As Search Engine Land pointed out(opens in a new tab), the number of Twitter pages now accessible by Google search dropped 62 percent over the last few days, which likely also hurt Twitter’s traffic as well.