Twitter’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week Continues: Massive Outage Hits Right Before Presidential Town Halls

Sarah RumpfOct 15th, 2020, 7:00 pm
 
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Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

Twitter was struck by a massive outage Thursday afternoon, a few hours before the dueling presidential town halls with President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and in the middle of an already tough week for the social media network.

Users noticed problems with their attempts to access their Twitter accounts, unable to post new tweets, view their notifications, or refresh their timelines. Many users reported seeing an error message that said the site was “over capacity” when they attempted to post a new tweet.

Several Mediaite reporters noticed the problems on their own accounts after approximately 5:00 p.m. EDT, and other media outlets reported the outage began around that time as well.

The Verge reported that the outage was a worldwide problem, and workarounds that worked with previous Twitter outages such as scheduling tweets or using third-party apps, did not appear to work.

The troubles came in the middle of a week in which Twitter found itself the target of loud criticism after a New York Post story containing allegations about Hunter Biden was blocked, and several high profile Twitter accounts — including the personal account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany — were locked for repeatedly attempting to share the article.

The Post story contained questionable sourcing and several key claims it made were debunked, but other articles with similar deficiencies had not received such harsh restrictions.

Twitter issued a statement at 6:17 pm ET:

We know people are having trouble Tweeting and using Twitter. We’re working to fix this issue as quickly as possible. We’ll share more when we have it and Tweet from @TwitterSupport when we can – stay tuned.

Update 7:18 pm ET: Currently, at least some Twitter functionality has been returned to some Twitter users, but not all. Several users were able to tweet, while others were able to refresh and read their timelines but unable to post tweets themselves.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.