Twitter briefly freaked out Tuesday and started sending notifications with only random strings of numbers and letters — and now we know why.
CEO Jack Dorsey explained that a bug caused what would normally be invisible, back-end notifications to become visible for a short period.
Twitter Support described the invisible codes as how the app talks to your phone.
The issue started just before 1 p.m. in New York. After a few minutes, Dorsey said the problem "should be fixed."
@jack: Should be fixed now. Working to understand why it happened
So far it appears to be a pretty harmless bug, and comes just days after social media giant Facebook updated its users about a widespread hack of its platform. But for a few fleeting minutes, the random characters bug served as fodder for jokes.
@CaseyNewton: Twitter is in a LOT of trouble for leaking my Bitcoin address like this