Twitter users briefly unable to tweet, send messages

By Clare Duffy, CNN Business

Twitter users on Wednesday briefly encountered various issues with the platform, including the inability to tweet, send direct messages or follow new accounts.

Some users trying to send new tweets received a pop-up saying they had reached the “daily limit” for sending tweets; for others, it simply said, “we’re sorry, we weren’t able to send your Tweet.” Likewise, follow attempts were met with a message saying, “Limit reached. You are unable to follow more people at this time.” And direct messages also failed to send.

Some users said they were only able to send tweets by using Twitter’s tweet scheduling function.

Outage tracker DownDetector showed more than 9,000 Twitter issue reports as of 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, although reports began to decline within half an hour and the ability to tweet appeared to quickly return for some users.

Twitter has experienced a range of technical glitches since Elon Musk took over the company and laid off more than half its staff late last year. Users have previously reported issues with the app’s two-factor authentication tool, seeing replies listed above a tweet rather than below it and seeing old tweets show up repeatedly in their feed or mentions.

Some former employees raised concerns that the mass layoffs under Musk could cause the platform to break in big or small ways, after workers with knowledge of Twitter’s key systems were ousted.

It’s not clear what caused Wednesday’s apparent glitch. Twitter, which eliminated much of its media relations staff last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the outage.

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