Twitter victim of a giant bug. Users of the blue bird social network experienced several hours of disruption on Wednesday February 8. A virtual limitation of the number of tweets published per day appeared on the account of several Internet users. For its part, Twitter Blue had announced a few hours earlier the arrival of 4000-character tweets.
A non-existent limitation?
Users experiencing a problem with the platform may have observed the following message: “You have exceeded the daily limit for sending tweets“, according to CNBC. A reference to a rule that does not seem (yet?) to exist on the social network. Other people may have encountered a more common error stating: “We’re sorry we couldn’t send your tweet. Would you like to try again or save this tweet to drafts?”
Multiple bugs that affected users’ ability to post tweets and send or receive private messages. The outage occurred between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. (French time), according to reports posted on the site Downdetector.
Quickly, the support team confirmed the issue: “Twitter may not work for some of you. We are sorry for this issue and are working to resolve it..”
Longer but cut tweets
The arrival of 4000 character tweets had been announced hours before the global blackout. The classic 280-character limit now disappears for US Twitter users subscribed to the Twitter Blue service. A function that does not store long tweets in draft, nor to schedule them for later publication.
Within the newsfeed, tweets exceeding the historical limit will be cut off, and the user will have to click on a “Show more” tab to read the entire text. A new feature supposed to attract new subscribers to the detriment of the user experience on the platform.
Since taking over as head of Twitter, Elon Musk has laid off nearly 80% of the company’s workforce. Currently, the social network has 1,300 active employees, including less than 550 full-time engineers, according to internal documents seen by CNBC.
