Many people were confused about the change, wondering whether it was a glitch or a purposeful move on the part of Twitter, which is under the control of mega-billionaire Elon Musk. Previously, you could search Twitter and view tweets without needing a registered account. But now, visiting any Twitter page displays a log-in prompt instead.

Musk, in a post Friday afternoon, claimed that Twitter took the step to improve performance on the platform after third-party companies were “scraping” data and overloading its systems.