Twitter is broken after API fail

Is Twitter finally hitting the breaking point? Twitter users reported that Twitter’s incoming and outgoing API started failing on Monday morning, breaking many of the site’s core features.

The API outage appeared to prevent Tweetdeck from working, as well as even blocking access to the Twitter home page for some people (including PCWorld editor Brad Chacos, shown below). When users tried to post screenshots of the API breaking features… those screenshots were broken, too. The outages generated error messages: “{“errors”:[{“message”:”Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api… for more information”,”code”:467}]”

Unfortunately, even the link in the error message failed to work.

Brad Chacos / iDG

Naturally, “Twitter API” trended as a result, as did related searches like “Did Twitter,” and “Images.” Some began speculating that Twitter hadn’t paid one or more bills. Twitter had a different explanation, however. “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now,” Twitter Support tweeted. “We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.”

The Twitter blog didn’t have an explanation for the issue — it, too, was blocked by the error message. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Twitter, hadn’t tweeted about the issue as of 9:23 AM PT. Musk has reportedly slashed Twitter’s headcount down to a fraction of what it once was, and the Twitter community has wondered when all of the layoffs would end up breaking critical Twitter features. Now we know.

This story was updated at 9:43 AM with additional information.