When attempting to click on links from Elon Musk’s social media platform that lead to external websites, a message appears stating, “Access to this endpoint is not included in your current API plan.”
On Monday, Twitter experienced another bout of poor performance for a certain duration of time. Since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October 2022 and subsequent multiple rounds of staff layoffs, the site has encountered a growing number of technical mishaps.
In the latest incident of mishap, the external links shared on the website failed to redirect users to their intended destination. Rather, when users clicked on the linked web articles, they were directed to an error message coded as “467”, which stated, “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint. Please refer to…”
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information,” the notice read.
Furthermore, there was a problem with photos not displaying correctly on the platform. A separate error message stated, “An error occurred loading this image.” Consequently, gray and brown boxes, broken links, and tweets commenting on these issues flooded people’s timelines. Gizmodo attempted to embed some tweets that referenced and demonstrated the problem in a post, but the content failed to load correctly initially. Therefore, the article includes a couple of screenshots depicting the situation.
A screenshot demonstrating what appeared in lieu of posted photo content.
The error message that displayed when a user-posted link is clicked.
The entire developer site of Twitter went down, displaying an error message that was consistent across the platform. One user, a computer science professor, reported that attempting to log out of the platform also led to the same error. Gizmodo confirmed that logging out of Twitter on a mobile browser resulted in an API error message, and users were unable to log back in for approximately 30 minutes.
Please note that sponsored links and multimedia content found in advertisements appeared to be unaffected by the events happening at Twitter, meaning that they could still be clicked on without issue. However, it’s worth noting that earlier this year, Elon Musk made a promise to shut down the free tier of Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API).
Gizmodo attempted to contact Twitter Support’s official company account on the platform for an explanation, but they did not receive an immediate response. Later, at 12:19 p.m. ET, Twitter Support acknowledged that “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now” and explained that an internal change had unintended consequences. They stated that they were working on fixing the issue and would provide an update.
Recently, Twitter encountered a complete outage, rendering users incapable of loading any content on their feeds, which occurred last week on Wednesday. Moreover, in February, Twitter’s mobile application went offline for several hours. These kinds of disturbances have become more frequent since Musk took over the company, which is justifiable, given that he has dismantled more than 75% of the company’s former employees.
It’s not unexpected that there is an error notice linked to Twitter’s API (application programming interface), given the direction that the platform has taken under Musk’s leadership. The platform has been restricting access to its back-end interface and focusing on monetizing API access and features like two-factor authentication, as part of its efforts to turn a profit. It’s possible that the error notice is the result of changes being made to API access by Twitter’s coders.
In addition to the ongoing issues with Twitter, Mastodon, a competing social media platform, has also reported an outage on Monday. At present, Mastodon’s website shows a notification about a “major outage,” which is being attributed to a “massive DDoS attack.” The error message states that they are collaborating with Fastly to address the situation.
Mastodon attributed its own outage to an attack, but the site likely also received a spike in genuine user traffic following the Twitter problems.
Webinsides contacted Mastodon to inquire if the problem could be attributed to an increased number of Twitter users joining the platform, and a representative stated that the issue was confirmed to be a deliberate attack.