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Twitter Outages Hit Thousands of Users Worldwide

A Twitter outage hit thousands of users worldwide. Samuel CORUM / AFP
A Twitter outage hit thousands of users worldwide. Samuel CORUM / AFP
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Twitter Outages Hit Thousands of Users Worldwide

A Twitter outage hit thousands of users worldwide. Samuel CORUM / AFP
A Twitter outage hit thousands of users worldwide. Samuel CORUM / AFP

Twitter users around the world reported errors accessing it for several hours, web monitors said Wednesday, in one of the biggest outages since Elon Musk bought the platform.

Twitter has been riven by chaos since the controversial billionaire completed his $44 billion acquisition in October and quickly moved to cut costs, AFP said.

Thousands of employees -- including engineers -- have since been fired or quit, raising concerns about Twitter's ability to quickly fix outages and technical problems.

DownDetector reported a spike in issues with Twitter starting around 7 pm Eastern time (midnight GMT), with users unable to see their main feed, check notifications or use other functions such as lists.

"Can anyone see this or is Twitter broken," tweeted one user.

"Works for me," replied Musk.

At the peak of the outage -- which appeared to be resolving as of 0400 GMT -- DownDetector clocked more than 10,000 complaints in the United States, as the hashtag #TwitterDown trended on the platform.

The number of reports logged by the monitor from other countries ranged from a few hundred to several thousand.

According to DownDetector's breakdown, the outage appeared to mainly affect people using Twitter on the web interface. Around 10 percent of complaints logged by the monitor were from mobile app users.

The cause of the outage was not immediately clear.

Web monitor NetBlocks said the outages were international and "not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering".

Twitter is one of the world's most influential social media platforms, used by world leaders, media, businesses and celebrities.

In addition to worries about its technical operations, fears have also grown about user safety on the platform after the mass layoffs hit content moderation and misinformation teams.

There was further controversy when Twitter allowed banned users to return to the platform, including former US President Donald Trump, who was kicked out following the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Twitter also suspended -- and then restored -- the accounts of journalists critical of Musk.

The South African-born billionaire has said his severe cost cuts at Twitter have saved the company, and announced last week that he would step down as CEO once he finds "someone foolish enough to take the job".

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Technology

AI Can Outpace Cybersecurity Norms 'in Months', Says Spy Alliance

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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AI Can Outpace Cybersecurity Norms 'in Months', Says Spy Alliance

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

The most advanced artificial intelligence models are improving quickly enough to outsmart prevailing cybersecurity know-how within months, the Five Eyes spy agency alliance has warned.

The risk posed by AI-enhanced hacking is in the spotlight, after US startup Anthropic said in April that its cutting-edge Mythos models had unprecedented abilities to find software vulnerabilities, reported AFP.

The security agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand urged governments and businesses to act swiftly to prepare themselves as AI evolves.

"The rapid pace of frontier AI development means cyber risk assumptions can become outdated in months, not years," said a joint statement dated Monday.

AI "lowers barriers for malicious actors and increases the speed and complexity of attacks", the Five Eyes advisory said.

"Breaches will occur. Preparedness helps you contain them quickly and prevent escalation into major operational and financial crises."

To improve cyber defenses, organizations should integrate AI tools into their security operations, update old systems and limit access to critical systems among other steps, they said.

Anthropic this month suspended access to Mythos 5 and a restricted version called Fable 5 to comply with a US national security order.

Just days after publicly launching Fable 5, the company said it had received a government directive banning all foreign nationals from accessing the two models.

The intervention is striking for a White House that has otherwise pushed to loosen AI oversight -- even moving to block states from writing their own rules.

Technology

Indian Startup Head Appointed as New WhatsApp Boss

The WhatsApp logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. (Reuters)
The WhatsApp logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. (Reuters)
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Indian Startup Head Appointed as New WhatsApp Boss

The WhatsApp logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. (Reuters)
The WhatsApp logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. (Reuters)

Meta has tapped Indian fintech founder Kunal Shah as the new head of WhatsApp, as the US tech giant seeks ways to monetize the messaging app's massive user base.

The announcement, made Monday night, was accompanied by news that Meta would also lead a $900 million funding round in Shah's consumer finance firm CRED.

"Kunal built CRED into one of India's most important technology companies," Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

"He brings the kind of builder mentality and global perspective that will serve him well in running the world's biggest messaging app."

Shah, a serial entrepreneur and influential figure in India's fintech world, started CRED in 2018 after selling an earlier payments startup to Indian e-commerce giant Snapdeal for roughly $400 million.

He is also one of India's most prolific angel investors, according to data tracker Tracxn, with the local financial press often reporting how Shah agrees to seed funding pitches within minutes of hearing them.

But over the last few years, Shah has focused on building CRED -- which got its start by offering rewards to customers for timely credit card payments.

Since then, the company has aggressively expanded into offering wealth management, insurance and lending services to its 17 million users.

This experience is likely to help WhatsApp as it seeks new revenue streams that go beyond the core advertising business of Meta, which also runs Facebook and Instagram.

While India is WhatsApp's largest market -- with over half a billion users, according to 2021 government figures -- analysts say it has largely missed the chance to build an equally popular payments service.

In May, the messaging app offered businesses in India the ability to use artificial intelligence for services including responding to customers at all hours or booking appointments.

Shah acknowledged the scope for future growth, saying in a statement that the gap between "WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive".

India's startup ecosystem also celebrated Shah's appointment -- the latest example of an Indian-born executive becoming the leader of a Silicon Valley company.

Sajith Pai of Blume Ventures, an early stage Indian start-up backer said Shah was getting an "even bigger canvas to paint his bold brushstrokes in".

"Great news for everyone in the Indian startup ecosystem, and for India!"

Technology

Wikipedia Won’t Let AI Edit Articles, Co-founder Says

The artificial intelligence AI acronym at the 10th edition of the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris, France, June 18, 2026. (Reuters)
The artificial intelligence AI acronym at the 10th edition of the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris, France, June 18, 2026. (Reuters)
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Wikipedia Won’t Let AI Edit Articles, Co-founder Says

The artificial intelligence AI acronym at the 10th edition of the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris, France, June 18, 2026. (Reuters)
The artificial intelligence AI acronym at the 10th edition of the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair in Paris, France, June 18, 2026. (Reuters)

Wikipedia does not trust artificial intelligence enough to let it play a direct role in editing articles on its platform, co-founder Jimmy Wales told AFP on Monday.

The problem of AI "hallucinations" -- in which fabricated output is confidently presented -- has been reduced with newer AI models but remains "very, very bad", Wales said on the sidelines of a climate action week event in London.

He added, however, that AI agents could prove useful in alerting Wikipedia's community of millions of editors to certain niche news that would otherwise be missed.

"We would not let it edit directly because you can't really trust it enough," he said.

Artificial intelligence platforms, meanwhile, rely on Wikipedia's content to answer users' questions.

That has contributed to an overall growth in visitors to the site from AI bots, while human traffic has dropped eight percent.

Wales, who sits on the board of trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, described the fall in human traffic as "meaningful" but "not a disaster," for the online encyclopedia, which ranks among the 10 most visited websites in the world.

The site, created in 2001, depends on donations from users so its business model does not directly rely on traffic.

Wales encouraged AI companies to "pay their fair share", because "hammering us with millions of requests costs real money," in the cost of running servers.

Wikipedia has already been "very successful" in signing agreements with several tech giants, the founder said.

"We're starting to block the ones who aren't behaving themselves, but we'll see how that goes."