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Chronicles

The story behind the story

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Twitter appears to have resolved an issue in Australia and New Zealand that caused downtime for over 12 hours, starting around 6:40am AEST on January 4

Zachariah Kelly / Gizmodo Australia :

Gizmodo Australia Zachariah Kelly

Context & Ripple Effects

This 12-hour regional blackout lands in what the coverage shows as a cluster of Twitter reliability failures: the platform had just resolved widespread site issues on December 28-29, and further disruptions hit on February 8, followed by global outages in early March. The January 4 event stands out mainly for its duration — over 12 hours confined to Australia and New Zealand rather than a shorter global episode.

What makes the pattern notable is the cadence: four documented failure windows inside roughly two months, each resolved without any published root-cause explanation in the coverage. For a service whose ad revenue was $4B in 2021 per SpaceX filings, repeated multi-hour downtime is a direct product-quality signal to both users and advertisers.

First-order effects

  • Users in Australia and New Zealand regain access after more than 12 hours starting around 6:40am AEST January 4 — the longest single outage window in the coverage, though geographically contained.

Second-order effects

  • With no official status channel cited in any of these incidents, third-party trackers like Downdetector become the de facto source of truth during failures, shaping how quickly advertisers and users perceive severity.

Third-order effects

  • If the December-to-March cadence holds, reliability shifts from background noise to a structural liability for Twitter: each extended outage compounds advertiser risk assessments built on its $1.08B Q2 2022 ad revenue base, and regional containment like this one suggests infrastructure fragility rather than isolated bugs.

The trend: Twitter's platform reliability is deteriorating into a recurring, multi-month pattern of outages whose frequency — not any single incident — is becoming the story advertisers and users price in.

Related: Twitter · Twitter resolves widespread issues reported by users · Many Twitter users reported issues on February 8 · Twitter users globally reported multiple outages

Related Coverage

Discussion

  • @carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
    Does Twitter really need all these data centers? Oops. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/...
  • @infernal_monkey @infernal_monkey on x
    Desktop Twitter's been absolutely fucked in Australia for over 12 hours now and I'm almost impressed that it's actually getting even worse I've never seen DOUBLE ERROR https://twitter.com/...
  • @tomcoates Tom Coates on x
    What do you mean it'll start to collapse when all the core staff leave?! https://www.gizmodo.com.au/...
  • @cameronwilson Cameron Wilson on x
    small sample size but I've heard and can personally attest to Twitter working better if you use a VPN to access it through the US. APAC servers must be borked
  • @joshgnosis Josh Taylor on x
    🙃 https://twitter.com/...
  • @mishimakitan @mishimakitan on x
    Apparently, Twitter is specifically down for AUS/NZ regions right now so I guess (fortunately or unfortunately) I'll just be forced to focus on work until it's resolved 💀 https://www.gizmodo.com.au/...
  • @ketanj0 Ketan Joshi on x
    Twitter simply doesn't load at all if you VPN into Australia, lol https://twitter.com/...
  • @joshgnosis Josh Taylor on x
    A lot of people in Australia reporting issues accessing Twitter, or Twitter being slow (it's slow for me) https://downdetector.com.au/ ...
  • @viperwave Rocky on x
    There is a massive twitter outage in Australia in case you wondered why your feed was oddly pleasant today.
  • @gizmodoau @gizmodoau on x
    It's taken us 20 minutes to get this tweet out, so uh... Twitter is not doing well. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/...
  • @cameronwilson Cameron Wilson on x
    Elon finally did it https://twitter.com/...
  • @easemehupplz @easemehupplz on x
    Prob an issue with their AWS services in our region. Looks like only content is affected so far. https://twitter.com/...
  • @humpjbear1 Bear on x
    Reports still coming in that Twitter in Australia/New Zealand is not working correctly with no response from Twitter or Elon about it. Site is not entirely down but reports that replies won't load, tweets aren't sending and people can't refresh their home pages #TwitterDown https…
  • @emergencybk @emergencybk on x
    Hey @Twitter, it's been 10+ hours since Australia & NZ's Twitter's stuffed (unless you've external country VPN) Have you tried, checking its plugged in, turning off/on or... Just realising there's an issue & trying to fix it?