The failure affected the social network Twitter on Monday. Internet links that take users to other pages and content on the Internet were down for several minutes.
Twitter, whose workforce has been drastically cut by the multibillionaire, has previously warned of a risk of disruption following “internal changes”.
“Currently, some aspects of Twitter may not work as expected. We made an internal change that had unintended consequences. We’re working on it and will let you know when it’s fixed,” the official @TwitterSupport account says.
Half an hour later, the links started working again, and the reports on the specialized site Downdetector fell, having accumulated more than 8,000.
At the time of the crash, internet links led to a blank page with a brief message at the top: “Your current API does not enable access to this page.”
The API is the interface that the platform provides to IT developers to build tools on the service, such as Tweetdeck in the case of Twitter.
Last month, the California-based company announced that access to its API would soon stop being free.
Series of layoffs
Elon Musk, already the head of Tesla and SpaceX, bought Twitter in late October for $44 billion. He fired half the staff immediately and has continued to fire many engineers ever since to save money.
The New York Times and other trade publications such as The Information estimate that the San Francisco-based company now has fewer than 2,000 employees, up from 7,500 four months ago.
The social network, which had more than 368 million users worldwide per month last year, will lose about 32 million between 2022 and 2024 due to the spread of toxic content or an increase in crashes, according to Insider Intelligence.
With many advertisers gone, the social network’s turnover and adjusted earnings were down about 40% year-on-year in December, according to the Wall Street Journal.