Twitter has flaws that prevent tweeting

FILE – The Twitter logo is seen at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Dec. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Many Twitter users had trouble tweeting, following accounts or accessing their direct messages on Wednesday as the Elon Musk-owned platform experienced various technical problems.

“Twitter may not be working as expected for some of you. Sorry for the inconvenience. We are aware and working to fix it,” the company tweeted from its “support” account.

There were no further details at this time, and an email sent to the company’s press account seeking comment went unanswered. Twitter has dissolved its media relations team.

Users started noticing problems when they tried to send tweets and received a message that they had reached their “tweet limit”.

Although Twitter has been limiting the number of tweets an account can send for years, it’s 2,400 a day — or 100 an hour — far more than most normal human-managed accounts send.

Users also had trouble trying to follow other Twitter accounts, receiving the message: “You can’t follow any more people at this time,” with a link to the company’s policy on follow limits.

Twitter limits the number of accounts a user can add to their follow list in a single day to 400, that is, more than a normal Twitter user adds on any given day.

It’s unclear what caused Wednesday’s crash, but Twitter engineers and experts have been warning that the platform is at greater risk of crashing since Musk laid off most of the people working to keep it running.

In November, the engineers who left Twitter explained to The Associated Press why they expected there would be significant inconvenience for Twitter’s more than 230 million users now that more than two-thirds of the company’s utility engineers with headquarters in San Francisco are apparently gone.

While they didn’t foresee a crash any time soon, the engineers did note that Twitter could present some flaws, especially if Musk made major changes without much off-the-shelf testing.

A Twitter engineer who had worked in utilities told the AP in November that engineering team pools had dwindled to about 15 before Musk acquired the company — not including team leaders, who were all laid off—to three or four before even more resignations ensued.

Then more institutional knowledge that cannot be replaced overnight came out the door.

“Everything could collapse,” said the programmer.

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