Visitors to the social networking site Twitter were surprised by their inability to see tweets, a step described by the platform owner Elon Musk as an "emergency and temporary measure."

The site "Mashable" said that visitors were previously able to view and see tweets without needing to log into their Twitter accounts, adding, "But the platform chose to change this policy and impose login on every visitor in order to be able to see the tweets."

This step sparked controversy among visitors and users of Twitter, which prompted American billionaire Elon Musk to hasten to comment and clarify.

Musk mentioned in a tweet on Twitter: "We were experiencing data theft, which was insulting to ordinary users!", adding that the new decision is considered an "emergency and temporary measure."

The Twitter owner had previously expressed his frustration with artificial intelligence companies such as "OpenAI," which use Twitter data to train their language models.

The platform has recently begun implementing a number of measures to encourage advertisers to return to Twitter, in addition to increasing subscription revenues.