LAST UPDATE | 6 Mar 2023

TWITTER HAS SUFFERED a major outage globally this evening.

Some users reported that they could no longer open links to articles from outside websites.

“Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now,” the company’s tech support account said in a tweet, blaming the problem on “unintended consequences” from an update to the platform.

Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 6, 2023

DownDetector.ie recorded a sharp spike in reported problems after 5pm today. 

The breakdown came as the Elon Musk-owned social media giant was trying hard to stabilise after several rounds of layoffs saw more than two thirds of staff let go.

Experts say Twitter is running on a skeleton staff, leaving the platform vulnerable to outages as well as disinformation and harmful content given the fewer numbers to keep the site up and running.

During the outage, users trying to click into links were greeted with an error message saying “your API plan does not include access to this endpoint”.

An API, or Application Programming Interface, refers to Twitter software that is made available to outside developers to make their own adaptations of the platform.

In a tweet this evening, Musk said that the issue was caused after a “small API change had massive ramifications”.

He said that the API would “ultimately require a complete rewrite”,

Twitter said last month that it will discontinue allowing free access to outside developers as the company seeks new ways to raise revenue.

Since Musk took ownership of Twitter, the platform has been riven by chaos, with major advertisers fleeing, threatening the site’s main source of revenue.

With reporting by © AFP 2023