Twitter suffers major outage days after Elon Musk sacked more staff

Social media giant Twitter has been hit by a major outage, just days after another round of lay-offs at the company.

The hashtag #TwitterDown and the term “My Twitter” were trending on Wednesday morning as users struggled to access their accounts.

The users of the site reported the outage on the Down Detector website, a site that monitors outages.

Down Detector also reported that the issues affecting the microblogging platform started just after 2.15 am pacific time and affected users worldwide.

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While it is not clear what caused the outage, some users lamented that the issues are affecting their timelines.

Also, regular users complained of being greeted by what appeared to be a welcome page, which encouraged them to click and find their first followers.

“Welcome to Twitter!” read the message. “This is the best place to see what’s happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now”.

As well as long-time users not being able to reach their profiles, others who received the message noted not being able to see their own tweets or others from their existing followers in their feeds, Euronews.com reports.

The number of reported issues on Twitter spiked at 11.47 am CET with 5,223 reports on Down Detector. Most of these issues – 66 per cent – concerned the Twitter app, according to the site.

Billionaire owner Elon Musk let dozens more staff go last weekend, including those described as “hardcore loyalists” who publicly embraced his vision for the company following his takeover last year.

According to media reports in the US, some 200 staff were fired. It comes after thousands of jobs – around half of Twitter’s worldwide workforce – were fired in November.

Many users took to the platform sharing memes poking fun at Musk’s leadership at the company and his decision to fire so many staff in light of the outage.

There is no indication as yet as to whether these latest lay-offs had any bearing on the outage but many core teams at Twitter are now operating with fewer staff.