#TwitterDown —

Twitter experiencing international outages; most users can’t tweet or DM [Updated]

Musk pausing Twitter feature updates amid global outage, report says.

Twitter experiencing international outages; most users can’t tweet or DM [Updated]

[Update: Late Wednesday night, Musk tweeted in response to a Twitter user asking if the platform was glitching, confirming that Twitter had "multiple internal & external issues simultaneously" and "should be fully back on track later" on Wednesday night. An Ars test this morning confirmed that some Twitter accounts that were previously experiencing reported issues are now able to tweet, DM, and follow accounts.]

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 platform’s 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 as 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 Twitter’s mass layoffs, including many engineers, while others tweeted speculation that the features were possibly disabled because Twitter began updating its API ahead of the platform’s plan to cut off free access, starting Thursday. According to Fortune, Twitter’s internal Slack channels are “going crazy” trying to determine the source of the glitch, including considering whether there’s a data center outage.

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.

Channel Ars Technica