Twitter, the social media giant with 330 million active users, was back online on Thursday morning after reports of a worldwide outage that came at a sensitive time for the company, which is locked in a heated legal battle with the billionaire Elon Musk over its acquisition.
Downdetector, a website that tracks internet disruptions, recorded more 54,000 reports of outages on the social media platform by around 8:15 a.m. Eastern time. Less than an hour later, Twitter acknowledged in a tweet that it was trying to resolve problems that users had gaining access to the platform. “We’re working to get it back up and running for everyone,” the company said.
The service interruption is another headache for Twitter, which sued Mr. Musk on Tuesday in Chancery Court in Delaware to force him to complete a $44 billion deal for the company. Mr. Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter, but said last week that he intended to walk away from the purchase.
Mr. Musk cited concerns over the number of fake accounts on Twitter as his justification for backing out of the agreement, saying he did not believe the company’s assertions that around 5 percent of its active users are bots. For months, Mr. Musk has criticized Twitter and its executives on the platform, even going as far as to tweet a poop emoji in response to a post by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief executive.
Twitter’s stock is down more than 28 percent since April 25, when Mr. Musk reached an agreement to buy the company for $54.20 a share. By comparison, the Nasdaq has fallen about 13.5 percent.
Twitter remains committed to holding Mr. Musk to completing the deal and is seeking a four-day trial in September.
“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” the company said in the suit. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
