Twitter down: Site not working with users told 'something is technically wrong'

'Thanks for noticing,' Twitter said, alongside a picture of an unhappy robot

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 17 April 2018 15:47 BST
Comments
Twitter users experiencing service outages

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Twitter has broken.

Users across the world were briefly shown an unhappy robot and a message that the site has broken, rather than the expected posts.

"Something is technically wrong," the site's error message read. "Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon."

The website DownDetector reported a sharp spike in the number of problems with the site around 3pm UK time. The problems were visible across the world, with particular hotspots in the UK, US and Japan – though that might simply be a result of who is online and reporting issues at that time.

TweetDeck, Twitter's own more advanced client, seemed to be loading fine.

Twitter was once so known for outages that the "fail whale" – a little cartoon that showed when the site was broken – became beloved and hated in equal measure by its users. But as the site has grown so has its reliability, and the site breaks far more rarely than it once did.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in