Twitter Inc was down for thousands of users around the globe on Thursday, the first such outage since February, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There have been more than 50,000 incidents of people reporting problems with Twitter in the United States, according to the website. Users in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil and Italy also reported problems.
The shutdown comes days after Twitter sued Elon Musk for breaching its $44 billion deal to buy the company and asked a Delaware court to order the world’s richest man to complete the acquisition.
The outage began around 8 a.m. ET and prevented users from accessing the microblogging site on desktop and mobile phones.
It was not clear what caused the outage. Users were getting an error message: “Tweets are not loading right now.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but its status panel indicated that all systems were operational.
“Sometimes you want to see yourself out. Take control of your mentions and have a conversation with Unmentioning, now open to everyone on all devices,” the platform said in a tweet.
The company suffered another widespread outage in February that it blamed on a software bug.
Other major tech companies have also been hit by outages over the past year, with a nearly six-hour outage that kept Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger out of reach for billions of users in October.
Notorious for outages in its early years, Twitter used its famous “Fail Whale” illustration, a beluga being lifted by birds, for such incidents, but discontinued the logo in 2013.
Those who could use Twitter jokingly blamed Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc. “Elon Musk creates disruption on Twitter,” one user tweeted.
Shares of Twitter fell slightly to $36.60 before the bell on Thursday.
Twitter is asking a Delaware court to grant “specific performance” under the terms of its contract with Musk — in other words, to force him to complete the acquisition at the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share.
