Twitter was experiencing unexplained technical problems Wednesday, as key features of the Elon Musk-owned social network appeared to be not working correctly.
Problem reports with Twitter began spiking around 10:30 a.m. ET on July 12, according to uptime-monitoring service Downdetector. In the U.S., user-reported errors for Twitter’s website and app shot up to more than 7,100 complaints by 10:36 a.m. ET. Of the user reports, 50% were related to the Twitter; 43% were related to the website; and 7% were problems associated with the server connection, according to Downdetector.
One of the main problems users reported was the inability to see an account’s tweets from their profile page, at least on the desktop (web) version of the Twitter service. According to Twitter’s API status monitoring page, all systems were operational as of Wednesday morning.
Neither Musk nor Twitter’s official support handle have addressed the problems. An email sent to Twitter’s PR account requesting additional info resulted in an autoreply with a poop emoji (a change Musk announced this past March).
Twitter has faced other technical struggles of late. Last week,the service imposed “temporary” restrictions on the number of posts users could readon the site to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation,” Musk claimed. Twitter also continues to block users who are not logged in from viewing tweets, which Musk also had said was a temporary measure to stabilize the platform.
The recent technical glitches at Twitter come as meta last week launched Threads, a Twitter-like social app that rides on top of Instagram’s infrastructure. On Monday, meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads that the app had hit 100 million sign-ups over the weekend. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been 5 days!” he wrote. Of course, it remains to be seen how many Threads users continue to remain engaged on the platform; currently, meta is not serving ads or otherwise monetizing Threads.
Since Muskclosed the $44 billion deal for Twitter, the company has laid off about 80% of its employees. Other technical problems at Twitter have included a glitch-proneTwitter Spaces live audio event with Ron DeSantis, who was using the platform to officially announce his 2024 presidential campaign.
