WaPo article: https://archive.is/wip/sgViP
Company owner Elon Musk tweeted that the change was a “temporary emergency measure” to deter third-party scraping of data from the social media platform. “We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” Musk wrote.
User "elonmusk" not found
Surely anyone scraping data would be using the API, which is not blocked.
You'd think. In one of the replies @elonmusk expresses shock/surprise that OpenAI (which he is currently suing) has twitter data in its models. I suspect that much of the current star "AI" platforms are built on illegitimately acquired datasets (gettyimages™) which explains why they are now so adamant about building regulatory frameworks to stifle their competition.
On the other hand, as someone who was using the net since before it became corporatized and sanitized, I think free access to data and protocols is part of the unspoken agreement. Scraping (until it becomes a burden on bandwidth) is no different than browsing. Once you put something online it's public and should free for anyone to use as they see fit within the law.