broken ratelimit?

[ZenoNiQ]

Traceback (most recent call last):
  line 136, in <module>
    main()
 line 126, in main
    userid = usernameToUserId(args.username)
 line 39, in usernameToUserId
    if json.loads(r).get("message") == 'rate limited':
  File "C:\Program Files\Python3\lib\json\__init__.py", line 346, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "C:\Program Files\Python3\lib\json\decoder.py", line 337, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "C:\Program Files\Python3\lib\json\decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)