Twitter was hit by multiple glitches on Wednesday afternoon, as thousands of users reported widespread technical problems that damaged the site’s basic functionality.
Around 2:00 p.m. Pacific, thousands of users — an exact total is unknown but it appears to have affected the majority of account holders — discovered they were unable to send a new tweet. If they did, they received a warning that they’d met their “daily limit.”
Users posting via API access or by scheduling tweets weren’t blocked. This specific problem appears to have been fixed as of approximately 2:50 p.m. Pacific, but soon after users reported new widespread problems. First, the site’s database of uploaded gifs became unavailable. Around the same time, the ability for users to follow one another was disabled.
And as of 3:45 p.m., many users reported that the notifications page no longer loaded for them.
The reason for the problems is currently unknown. However according to Fortune, they’re related to Musk’s decision to pause development as he attempts to cut costs at the site, which he has said recently was losing millions of dollars every week.
Hours after the rash of glitches, Musk acknowledged the matter in a brief tweet that said “multiple internal & external issues” happened simultaneously but offered no further details.
“Go home, Twitter. You’re drunk,” “Sandman” author Neil Gaiman joked.
On Feb. 2, Elon Musk-owned company announced it was moving away from allowing developers to access its Application Programming Interface (API) for free and will instead offer a paid basic tier. No more specific details were given, except that the changes would be coming this week. Those changes have now been postponed to next week.
“Look, if we’re only getting so many tweets a day/hour, etc, every one of them should be to tell @elonmusk he’s an idiot,” tweeted Jeff Ewing.
Speculation was high that Musk had pushed the wrong button at Twitter HQ.
“No Tweets, DMs, RTs or likes for lots of people. You can schedule a tweet in the future on Tweetdeck, but I hadn’t tweeted more than ten times today. WHAT DID YOU DO ELON?,” asked Dolores Quintana.
