When other social media platforms appear to be down, the masses tend to run to Twitter to see if others are encountering the same issues.
But where do people run when it’s Twitter that appears to be down and no one is able to Tweet about it?
That was the question plaguing millions of users Wednesday night when the platform went defunct after owner Elon Musk rolled out an update that left many unable to use the most basic feature of the platform — posting a Tweet.
Twitter Support acknowledged the issue around 6:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday.
Twitter may not be working as expected for some of you. Sorry for the trouble. We’re aware and working to get this fixed.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 8, 2023
According to DownDetector, outages peaked at around 5:06 p.m. EST when 9,491 users reported an issue with the site. Reports dropped to a low of 34 users with issues at around 3:51 a.m. EST on Thursday morning.
Most users were receiving messages saying “You are over the daily limit for sending Tweets,” prompting the platform to ask them whether or not they wanted to save their Tweet as a draft or delete it.
il twitter down sta arrivando pic.twitter.com/3sTO0qtnLb
— giu? (@altezzosaaa) February 8, 2023
Others were complaining that they were unable to follow new users or see their new followers.
The bug came following the roll-out of Musk’s new initiative to allow select (for now) users to post 4,000 character long Tweets, per Gizmodo. Tweets are currently set at a 248-character limit.
Musk commented on Wednesday’s issues just after midnight EST on Thursday morning, acknowledging that something was awry and that the service should be working as usual at some point on Thursday.
Multiple internal & external issues simultaneously today. Should be fully back on track later tonight.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2023
Twitter wasn’t the only social media platform that faced issues Wednesday.
Social media users complained of bugs with Meta’s Instagram and Messenger, which briefly left people unable to post Stories and in-feed Posts. There were also reports of errors when sending messages and other glitches.
Instagram reached a peak of 7,565 users reporting issues around 4:20 p.m. EST on Wednesday while Messenger showed over 1,186 users reporting issues around the same time.
“A technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing our products. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for Meta spokesperson told Reuters.
Both have since been resolved.
