Outage hits Twitter service in US, Europe

Temporary outage hits Twitter service – Copyright AFP SONNY TUMBELAKA

Twitter experienced a widespread but seemingly brief outage in the United States and parts of Europe on Thursday — fresh turbulence for the firm locked in a buyout battle with Elon Musk.

The Downdetector website showed that outage reports spiked in the United States around 8:00 am (1200 GMT), while users reported service interruptions in France and elsewhere.

However, by around 1245 GMT reports of outages to Downdetector were dropping off and users were back on the social media platform joking about the disruption.

“I’ve just had my most productive 30 minutes for years. In unrelated news, it seems Twitter went down for 30 minutes,” tweeted @joelyagar.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Service disruptions on social media platforms happen periodically, but major and long-term service outages are not common.

The service problems on Twitter come as the company has embarked on a legal fight with Musk over his moves to walk away from his $44 billion buyout bid that has roiled the company.

Twitter has sued to force Musk to complete the deal after he said he was terminating it over issues including his argument that the company has not been forthcoming about the number of fake accounts.