A technical glitch caused a Twitter outage on Wednesday; users from several parts of the world complained that they were unable to post tweets. Many received a notification saying "You are over the daily limit for sending Tweets" owing to the glitch. #TwitterDown started trending.
Twitter users complained that they were unable to tweet, send DMs, or follow other users. Many of them received a notification telling them they have crossed the daily limit of tweets, even if they hadn't even sent out a single tweet.
Some were logged out of their accounts altogether.
Why is Twitter down?
While it was not immediately known why the glitches were happening, Twitter said that they were working to get it fixed. "Twitter may not be working as expected for some of you. Sorry for the trouble. We're aware and working to get this fixed," it said.
Some users complained that they were unable to post new tweets because they had crossed the limit according to Twitter notifications. The daily limit for the number of tweets is 2,400. Meanwhile, Twitter users can follow 400 new handles in a single day. But people also complained that the limit exceeds notifications popped up even though they hadn't exceeded it.
The Verge reported that while the glitches were being fixed, the issues persisted for some users.
DownDetector.com, which collects user reports of outages, showed a spike of around 10,000 outage incidents starting just after 7:30PM ET.
Many technical issues have been reported since Elon Musk acquired the platform in October 2022 in a $44 billion deal. Quoting Musk, BBC reported that Twitter's workforce had been reduced from 8,000 in October 2022 to about 2,300 last month.
Turbulence at Twitter
Layoffs to glitches, all has not been well with Twitter since Musk's takeover. In December 2022, several journalists who reported on Musk were blocked from Twitter as the social media giant cited a 'violation' of privacy rules. Musk accused the of doxxing and putting out his private information in the public domain, risking his security. "You dox, you get suspended. End of story, that's it," Musk said in Twitter Spaces in response to The Washington Post journalist Drew Harwell.
Earlier in November, Twitter employees allegedly refused to accept new Musk's "ultimatum" to commit to a "hardcore" work environment. Reports said that hundreds of workers resigned, after which the office was shut for three days. Musk had reportedly sent a mail to the employees telling them that Twitter was shifting to an engineer-driven operation, one that will need to be extremely hardcore going forward. The Washington Post said that the employees were asked to click an icon and respond if they agreed to comply with the new mandate and stay.
Twitterati's response to glitch
Users responded with memes to the Twitter outage. Here is a look at some of the reactions: