Thousands of desktop users get logged out as Twitter experiences outage, again

Twitter experienced a string of disruptions on Monday as thousands of users struggled to use the social media platform on their desktops. According to the outage tracking site DownDetector, over 3,600 reports of the outage surfaced on other platforms. On Reddit, users complained that they were being logged out of Twitter on their desktops and were unable to sign back in. 

The outage coincides with the rapid popularity of Mastodon, which emerged as an alternative to Twitter after the company was acquired by Elon Musk last year. The reason behind the mass disruption is unclear, as Twitter is yet to provide a clarification instead of the usual poop emoji it responds with when reached out to. Twitter, however, is no stranger to problems. Earlier in February, users experienced issues technical issues in tweeting and accessing the platform's dashboard TweetDeck. In March, thousands of users were unable to load images on their feeds and click on links. The issue lasted for less than an hour, according to The Verge.

Musk announces new Twitter feature amid outages, issues  

Meanwhile, Musk recently teased a new feature on the platform that would allow publishers to charge users per article. The process will take a simple click, and would be a “win-win” situation for media organisations and the public. Announcing the feature, the CEO tweeted: "Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per-article basis with one click."

"This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per-article price when they want to read an occasional article. Should be a major win-win for both media organisation & the public,” he added. While things might appear flowery on the platform, Twitter's offices continue to face the brunt of Musk's big moves.

According to internal documents accessed by New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger, Musk has lowered the parental leave from 20 weeks to just two. To make matters worse, the paid leave will need to meet the requirements of the area where the employees work. This means that in states that do not mandate paid leaves, Twitter workers would only be able to take a maximum of two weeks off.