Twitter blamed an ‘inadvertent change to our internal systems’ and insisted there was ‘no evidence of a hack’ as all of its users were back online Thursday night after an outage derailed more than 50,000 accounts.
The social media giant went down for several hours for thousands of users across the globe soon, leaving them unable to share tweets, see notifications or refresh the News Feed.
More than 50,000 users worldwide reported issues soon after 5p.m. E.T. on Down Detector, which monitors websites and online services.
By 11:30 p.m. Twitter announced the problem had been resolved and it was in the ‘all clear’ with all systems now ‘operational’ again.
The timing of the outage is significant coming just 24 hours after the platform faced a backlash for removing the New York Post article about Joe Biden’s alleged dealings with Ukraine and as Donald Trump threatened to revoke its legal protections.
An outage map from around 5 p.m. shows the outage hitting more US users, with some experiencing problems in the US and other parts of the world
By 11:30 p.m. Twitter announced the problem had been resolved and it was in the ‘all clear’
The outage caused many users worldwide to come up against error messages on both the website and iOS and Android apps.
Down Detector’s outage map showed problems were mainly among US users, with some experiencing problems in the UK and Japan, along with other parts of the world.
Although the site was still accessible throughout, users came up against an error message that says ‘Nothing to see here-yet’.
Many users also got the message: ‘Error. Something went wrong, but don’t fret – it’s not your fault’ and not all of the features were working properly.
Twitter’s official site status page said it was investigating ‘irregularity with Twitter APIs.’
The company denied that the outage was due to a hack or security breach.
‘Twitter has been down for many of you and we’re working to get it back up and running for everyone,’ the social media giant said in a statement at 7:16 p.m.
‘We had some trouble with our internal systems and don’t have any evidence of a security breach or hack.’
The platform later expanded on the explanation saying it was due to an ‘an inadvertent change we made to our internal systems’.
‘The recent issue was caused by an inadvertent change we made to our internal systems,’ Twitter said of the outage in a statement on its Twitter Comms page at around 8:14 p.m.
‘Twitter should be working for everyone within the next few hours.’
The service was back up and running for some users by around 7p.m. ET, when just 6,026 outages were reported on the monitoring site.
The service was at least partially back up and running for some users by around 7 p.m. ET, when just 6,026 outages were reported on the monitoring site
By 8 p.m., only around 2,600 outages remained and Twitter said the issue would be fixed for all users within a few hours.
By 10 p.m. most Twitter users were back up and running and the platform said the issue would be fully resolved by around midnight.
‘Most of you should be back to Tweeting. The outage was caused by a system change initiated earlier then planned, affecting most of our servers,’ Twitter said at 9:53 p.m.
‘We’re working hard to bring Twitter back to normal and expect things to be fully resolved in 1-2 hours. We appreciate your patience.’
Twitter then announced all the glitches were fixed by around 11:30 p.m.
‘And we’re all clear – Twitter should be working as expected for everyone. Thanks for sticking with us,’ the company said.
Although the website can still be accessed, many users are seeing ‘Error. Something went wrong, but don’t fret – it’s not your fault,’ but not all of the features are working properly
Twitter’s official site status page shows that it is investigating ‘irregularity with Twitter APIs.’ Some users are so frustrated they think it is best to just shut Twitter down completely
Although the site is still accessible, users are being shown an error message that says ‘Nothing to see here -yet’
The outage occurred hours after Donald Trump’s campaign account was locked by the social media giant, sparking outrage among the Republican party.
On Wednesday, Twitter first blocked the New York Post’s story that Joe Biden met with Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi, an associate of his son Hunter, months before Biden pressured Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Pozharskyi’s firm.
Accounts that posted the story were also locked including White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s personal account and the Trump campaign account.
Twitter and Facebook – which also limited the circulation of the story – were accused of censorship over the move.
Trump threatened to remove the US legal protections – known as Section 230 – that exempts social media platforms from liability for the material users post on their networks.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Wednesday night apologized for the lack of explanation around the social media giant’s decision to block the story about Biden but stood by the company’s move to do so.
The outage occurred hours after President Donald Trump’s campaign account was locked. Trump has now threatened to revoke Twitter and Facebook’s Section 230 protections – which shield them from being sued over content posted on their platforms
On Wednesday, Twitter blocked the circulation of the New York Post’s story that Joe Biden met with Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi
Dorsey tweeted that his company’s actions had been ‘unacceptable’ and admitted there had been a lack of communication surrounding Twitter’s decision.
‘Our communication around our actions on the NYPost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable,’ he said.
He then linked to a statement from the company that said it was restricting the link because ‘personal and private information’ had been shared in the story.
Senate Republicans vowed Thursday to subpoena Dorsey to appear before the Judiciary Committee days before Election Day over Twitter blocking the story.
But after 5 p.m. Thursday, Trump was not the only one unable to properly use the platform.
Twitter announced Thursday even – soon after the outage – that it will no longer block and remove hacked content and will instead label tweets.
The company’s Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead announced the policy changes on Thursday, saying the new rules applied unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them after facing a backlash over the Biden-Ukraine story.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Wednesday night apologized for the lack of explanation around the social media giant’s decision to block the story about Biden but stood by the move
Twitter released a statement on Wednesday night about the decision
Along with leaving thousands of users frustrated by the outage, Thursday evening saw the dueling town halls for Trump and Biden – and many people around the world planned on scrolling through Twitter to get the latest updates about the events.
The two took questions in different cities on different networks: Trump on NBC from Miami, Biden on ABC from Philadelphia.
This was the second outage to hit Twitter this month – the previous one was just on October 1.
That incident also saw more than 50,000 user reports on Down Detector, who lived in the US, Europe and Asia.
Many users were met with an ‘error message’ when logging in, along with a blank news feed that only reads ‘try again’ and disabled features – all of which hindered their ability to share tweets.
The peak of the outage hit around 10am ET, but much of the service was restored around 10:45am ET.
