Twitter broke in a pretty big way on Wednesday.
It’s been predicted for some time now that Twitter could very well stop working out of the blue one day, thanks to the ineptitude of its owner, Elon Musk. Many Twitter users got a taste of what that might be like Wednesday afternoon when they lost the ability to tweet, send DMs or use Tweetdeck outside of a few workarounds.
Thankfully, Twitter has stabilized somewhat and users can tweet once more, but there are some real big caveats on that front. Just another day on good old Twitter dot com, eh?
Here’s everything we know about Twitter’s technical troubles.
So uh...what's going on with Twitter?
It all started when users began having problems posting tweets, many of them receiving an error message stating, “you are over the daily limit for sending Tweets.” For a good while, the only way you could tweet was to use the app’s scheduling tool and wait for the clock to roll over.
cool cool pic.twitter.com/V1X9Xi3vCa
— Andrew Joseph (@AndyJ0seph) February 8, 2023
Regular retweets were busted too, leading users to settle for quote-tweeting content they wanted to share.
While tweets and retweets have gone back to normal, direct messages still seem to be borked and are slowly coming back online. Tweetdeck also seems to slowly be returning to normal after hours of being down, but is still experiencing issues as of 9:30 p.m. ET.
OK, but WHAT IS GOING ON WITH TWITTER
No one really knows, though there’s plenty of speculation! But it is pretty interesting that the outage happened hours before Twitter was set to implement changes to its API.
We have been busy with some updates to the Twitter API so you can continue to build and innovate with us.
We’re excited to announce an extension of the current free Twitter API access through February 13. Here’s what we’re shipping then 🧵
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 8, 2023
A new form of free access will be introduced as this is extremely important to our ecosystem – limited to Tweet creation of up to 1,500 Tweets per month for a single authenticated user token, including Login with Twitter.
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 8, 2023
As for what an API is, it basically allowed developers to interface with Twitter to create third-party apps and bots that interact with the website. You know, things like Possum Every Hour and other good bots of that nature.
Thankfully, the proposed changes means those good bots can continue, but new limitations such as a monthly 1,500-tweet limit may disrupt the way they work.
As for how that’s connected to Wednesday’s technical issues, Fortune reports Twitter employees floated the idea that the API changes or a data center outage were a possible cause. Musk also reportedly emailed Twitter staff during the chaos:
SCOOP: Elon has emailed staff following the Twitter outage.
“Please pause for now on new feature development in favor of maximizing system stability and robustness, especially with the Super Bowl coming up.”
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) February 8, 2023
Elon Musk's email to staff here suggests that the massive technical glitch that halted people from tweeting, following other users and messaging might be related is related to consolidating data centers and reducing GCP usage, which could be a way to reduce costs. https://t.co/PGUyTRbNwP
— Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes) February 8, 2023
Imagine! Twitter breaking during the Super Bowl! Actually, don’t, please.
Is there another Twitter I can use while we FIGURE OUT WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH TWITTER
Well, if you’re looking for a one-to-one Twitter replacement, you’re pretty much out of luck. Users have begun to migrate to other sites that work similar to Twitter — such as Mastodon, Post, and Hive — but each has their own quirks and issues that need smoothing out.
Unfortunately, unless a big company like Google steps in with a viable competitor capable of recreating a Twitter facsimile, we’re probably just going to wake up one day to find the site dead for good.
Twitter breaking just in time for a massive Nintendo Direct is a good reminder that we sure could use a viable alternative before this place just becomes completely busted
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 8, 2023
