Users are irritated and the complaints are coming in a rush as Twitter seems to be experiencing extensive problems Wednesday and the question is whether this is due to the firing of thousands of workers.
People are trying to post but instead got error messages. This is the most serious disruption in the service since Elon Musk bought the platform in October.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the interruption or if the problems were widespread, but for about an hour, many users received an error message that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets.”
The disruption came just hours after Twitter rolled out a new product to Twitter Blue subscribers that allows them to send tweets with up to 4,000 characters. The company was also in the process of ending its free access to the application programming interface (API) on 9 February.
Some users said they were able to post if they scheduled their tweet to publish later rather than immediately.
At the time of reporting, Tweetdeck – a Twitter-owned service that allows users to view multiple columns of Twitter in browsers – remained down. There has been speculation that the product will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers, but the company has yet to announce whether that is the case.
The Firing Line
Since Musk took over the company, Twitter no longer has a press department so there is a little bit of confusion (and delay) if verifications are being sought. There was heavy firing of workers.
More than an hour after the disruptions started, the company said on one of its verified accounts that it was aware of the problems and was working to fix them.
When trying to retweet someone else’s post, some users got an error message: “Sorry! You have exceeded your Tweet limit. Try retweeting again tomorrow.” Some attributes the problems to the firing of workers.
Twitter does have a daily limit of 2,400 posts per day, according to its website, but that’s a ceiling that few users ever hit.