A small API change broke Twitter services for an hour (now fixed)

Since 11:50am ET, Twitter has been having major issues with its services.

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Twitter services are currently not fully working right now, the issue started at about 11:50 am ET on March 6, 2023. The issues include clicking on links on tweets, to loading images, to logging into some Twitter services, like TweetDeck.

Links broken. When you click on a link from a published tweet, you’re taken to an error message page that reads:

{"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}]}

I noticed this going down a bit after 11:50 and posted about it on Twitter, where else?

Tweet

I cannot embed the tweet here right now, so that is a screenshot of this tweet.

Not just links. It is not just links that are not working but also images, logging into some services, using the Twitter API and other features that may require use of the Twitter API.

Why we care. If you are promoting content or services right now on Twitter, you might want to delay those efforts until users can click on those links and fully access your tweets.

Stay tuned as I suspect Twitter is working on the issue, as there are a lot of reports complied about the issue and growing.

Twitter working on a fix. Twitter posted, saying, “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. 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.”

Fixed at 12:55pm ET. After about an hour of Twitter outages, it seems like Twitter has restored the issues. Twitter CEO Elon Musk blamed it on a “small API change” that had “massive ramifications.”


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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