Many Twitter users found themselves unable to tweet, follow accounts or access their direct messages on Wednesday as the Elon Musk-owned platform experienced a slew of widespread technical problems.
"Twitter may not be working as expected for some of you. Sorry for the trouble. We're aware and working to get this fixed," the company tweeted from its "support" account.
Further details were unavailable Wednesday afternoon and an email seeking comment from the company's press account went unanswered. Twitter has dissolved its media relations team.
Users first noticed the problem when they tried to send tweets and received a message saying they had reached their "tweet limit".
While Twitter has for years limited the number of tweets an account can send, it is 2,400 per day or 100 an hour far more than most regular, human-run accounts send on the platform.
Accounts also had trouble when they tried to follow another Twitter user, getting a message "You are unable to follow more people at this time" with a link to the company's policy on follow limits.
Twitter's long-standing limit on how many accounts a single user can follow in a single day is 400 again, more than a regular Twitter user would generally reach on any given day.
It is not clear what caused Wednesday's meltdown, but Twitter engineers and experts have been warning that the platform is at an increased risk of fraying since Musk fired most of the people who worked on keeping it running.
Already in November, engineers who left Twitter described for The Associated Press why they expect considerable unpleasantness for Twitter's more than 230 million users now that well over two-thirds of Twitter's pre-Musk core services engineers are apparently gone.
While they don't anticipate near-term collapse, the engineers said Twitter could get very rough at the edges especially if Musk makes major changes without much off-platform testing.
One Twitter engineer, who had worked in core services, told the AP in November that engineering team clusters were down from about 15 people pre-Musk not including team leaders, who were all laid off to three or four before even more resignations.
Then more institutional knowledge that can't be replaced overnight walked out the door.
"Everything could break," the programmer said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
You’ve hit your limit of {{free_limit}} free articles this month.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
Already subscribed? Log in
Subscribe to read the full story →
Quarterly Starter
₹900
3 Months
₹300/Month
Smart Essential
₹2,700
1 Year
₹225/Month
Super Saver
₹3,900
2 Years
₹162/Month
Renews automatically, cancel anytime
Here’s what’s included in our digital subscription plans
Access to Exclusive Premium Stories Online
Over 30 behind the paywall stories daily, handpicked by our editors for subscribers


Complimentary Access to The New York Times
News, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter & The Athletic
Business Standard Epaper
Digital replica of our daily newspaper — with options to read, save, and share


Curated Newsletters
Insights on markets, finance, politics, tech, and more delivered to your inbox
Market Analysis & Investment Insights
In-depth market analysis & insights with access to The Smart Investor


Archives
Repository of articles and publications dating back to 1997
Ad-free Reading
Uninterrupted reading experience with no advertisements


Seamless Access Across All Devices
Access Business Standard across devices — mobile, tablet, or PC, via web or app