Twitter breaks with barrage of new problems soon after new Elon Musk job cuts

Elon Musk's latest Twitter cuts - where 200 were culled over the weekend - affected dozens of engineers responsible for keeping the site online, according to a New York Times report. Photo / 123rf

Millions of people - including Kiwis - have woken up to a barrage of problems on Twitter as the social media platform experiences its latest in a string of breakdowns.

Elon Musk’s repeated job cuts are stoking new fears there aren’t enough people to triage Twitter’s problems, the New York Times reported.

According to a 9to5 Mac summary, the glitches hitting Twitter are:

• All links are broken
• Images aren’t loading
• Tweetdeck is completely offline
• Twitter subdomains are broken for things such as Developers and Ads
• You can’t report an account or tweet

So far, Twitter has offered only a general comment on the sweeping problems, saying in a statement: “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.”

But experts believe it was likely an attempt to implement changes to Twitter’s API - its applications programming interface, or layer that allows it to talk to other software - as Musk tightens control.

Although it’s not yet clear how the API changes will play out, there have been fears the new system will block the likes of GeoNet’s automated quake alerts.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Twitter outages, bugs and other glitches are increasingly piling up.

It reported that in February alone, Twitter experienced at least four widespread outages, compared with nine in all of 2022, according to NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages.

Twitter’s reliability has deteriorated as Musk has repeatedly slashed the company’s workforce, the Times said.

After another round of layoffs on Saturday, in which around 200 staff were culled, Twitter has fewer than 2000 employees, down from 7500 when Musk took over in October.

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The latest cuts affected dozens of engineers responsible for keeping the site online, three current and former employees told the Times.

Those shown the door over the weekend also included Esther Crawford, the Twitter product manager who went viral late last year after Musk asked staff to adopt a “hardcore” and she posted a photo of herself sleeping in her office overnight.

The cuts have also undermined regulatory efforts.

Musk laid off all Twitter staff that NZ’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet communicated with about the Christchurch Call.

And yesterday, Brent Carey, head of Netsafe - the lead responder under the Harmful Digital Communications Act - said Twitter had yet to respond to questions from his agency about Twitter’s new policies under Musk.