#TwitterDown — Twitter experiencing international outages; most users cant tweet or DM Musk pausing Twitter feature updates amid global outage, report says.
Ashley Belanger – Feb 8, 2023 11:35 pm UTC EnlargeSOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket reader comments 344 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit
Late Wednesday afternoon, Twitter began experiencing international outages, with many users unable to perform basic functions like tweeting, sending direct messages, and following accounts. When Ars reporters attempted to tweet, an error message was generated saying that a daily limit of tweets had been reached, even from accounts that had not tweeted that day. According to Twitter, users typically have to tweet 2,400 times to reach the platforms daily limit.
Independent Internet monitor NetBlocks tweeted that the outages impacted Twitter’s website, mobile app, and features like posting and retweeting and were not related to country-level Internet disruptions or filtering.
Twitter has no communications department to follow up to confirm if the apparent outage is due to a bug or recent product update, both possible causes reported by CNBC.
Some clever users discovered that they could still tweet by scheduling their posts, while some brands still appeared to be able to tweet. Other users immediately began reporting issues, according to the Internet tracking service Downdetector, which documented thousands of problems with the platform. One user reporting problems joked that the glitches were tied to Twitters mass layoffs, including many engineers, while others tweeted speculation that the features were possibly disabled because Twitter began updating its API ahead of the platforms plan to cut off free access, starting Thursday. According to Fortune, Twitters internal Slack channels are going crazy trying to determine the source of the glitch, including considering whether theres a data center outage. Advertisement
Fortune reporter Kylie Robison tweeted that Twitter CEO Elon Musk emailed staff after the outage began, indicating that it could be a data center issue, while also saying, Please pause for now on new feature development in favor of maximizing system stability and robustness.
Earlier today,Musk tweeted to confirm that Twitter was looking into reported Twitter restrictions in Turkey, but so far, Musk has not tweeted about the global outage. Like many Twitter users, it’s possible that Musk simply does not have access to tweet an update right now. reader comments 344 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Ashley Belanger Ashley Belanger is the senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica, writing news and feature stories on tech policy and innovation. She is based in Chicago. Email ashley.belanger@arstechnica.com // Twitter @ashleynbelanger Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars