‘Twitter very slow India, this is fact, not a claim’: Elon Musk

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk on Tuesday (November 15) said the social media platform is “very slow” in India, and apologised for being “super slow” in many countries.

“Twitter is very slow in India, Indonesia & many other countries. This is a fact, not a “claim”. 10 to 15 secs to refresh homeline tweets is common. Sometimes, it doesn’t work at all, especially on Android phones. The only question is how much delay is due to bandwidth/latency/app,” Musk tweeted.

Twitter is very slow in India, Indonesia & many other countries. This is fact, not “claim”.

10 to 15 secs to refresh homeline tweets is common. Sometimes, it doesn’t work at all, especially on Android phones.

Only question is how much delay is due to bandwidth/latency/app.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022

“Why is Twitter unusably slow in many countries? Seems odd that this would be bandwidth only,” he added.

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In another tweet, he said he would “like to apologise for Twitter being super slow in many countries. The app is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!”

Btw, I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

“I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong. Same app in the US takes ~ 2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~ 20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low,” he wrote.

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“There are ~ 1200 “microservices” server side, of which Rs 40 are critical to Twitter working at all, according to the server control team. Trimming down that 1200 number, reducing data usage, serialised trips & simplifying the app are all needed to improve the speed of use.”

Replying to a tweet from an Indian user on Twitter being slow to load in the country, Musk said, “In some parts of the world, refresh takes 30 seconds.”

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The user tweeted, “Correct, in India right now even if we have good internet speed, Twitter is slow compared to other social media like Insta. Also load time for home screen is also very high and not anywhere near to 2 secs. It’s like 10-15 sec average.”

I was told ~1200 RPCs independently by several engineers at Twitter, which matches # of microservices. The ex-employee is wrong.

Same app in US takes ~2 secs to refresh (too long), but ~20 secs in India, due to bad batching/verbose comms. Actually useful data transferred is low.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

Btw, I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022