Twitter Hit With Outage

Fears about Twitter’s fragility came to fruition Wednesday evening as the website went down for users around the globe, according to The Information.

User reports of outages spiked significantly around 5 p.m. PT according to the website Down Detector with users reporting difficulty logging onto the website altogether.

It’s the first significant outage at Twitter since the company was acquired by Elon Musk, who slashed budgets and laid off more than half the company, including much of its infrastructure organization.

Many former employees expected the website to go offline as a result of usage spiking during World Cup games in December, The Information previously reported. While the website functioned fine during the games, it faces two big tests to its capacity early next year—on New Years in Japan, when many Japanese users tweet at midnight, and during the Super Bowl on February 12, one former employee told The Information.

The outage comes among significant changes to how Twitter’s infrastructure works. Musk has taken steps to shut down one of the company’s three data centers, in Sacramento, significantly reducing redundancy and increasing the likelihood of an outage, people familiar with the matter told The Information.

It couldn’t be learned what caused the outage on Wednesday.