A petition to revoke Article 50 and prevent the UK from leaving the European Union crashed the UK government’s website on Thursday morning, after 600,000 people swarmed to add their signatures.
The petition, which was posted on Wednesday night after PM Theresa May addressed the British public to criticize MPs for her requesting a delay to Brexit, was receiving 1,500 signatures every minute before the site crashed.
© Petitions.parliament.uk
At around 9am a message appeared to state that the site was “down for maintenance” and asked users to “please try again later.” By 9.40am the site was up and running before crashing shortly afterwards.
The collapsing of the petition site was met with good humour on social media with satirical Twitter account Have I Got News for You, joking: “BREAKING: Theresa May finally succeeds in getting people to back something.”
Have I Got News For You✔@haveigotnews
BREAKING: Theresa May finally succeeds in getting people to back something. pic.twitter.com/Rr3aNZ2ohc2,6462:02 PM – Mar 21, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy876 people are talking about this
Others urged people not to camp on the site to see the numbers go up, in order to prevent it from crashing multiple times.
If you’ve signed the Revoke Article 50 petition please resist the impulse to go back and check as it’s helping to crash the site. Follow https://twitter.com/UltraButt instead for regular updates
Please retweet912:40 PM – Mar 21, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy19 people are talking about this
Chairman Meow #FBPE@HandsomeSuperb
If you’ve already signed the Revoke Article 50 petition, it’s probably worth resisting the urge to go back onto the site to check how many people have signed it since you’re adding to the traffic that’s causing the site to crash. 1:03 PM – Mar 21, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacySee Chairman Meow #FBPE’s other Tweets
The petition calls on the government to revoke Article 50 and keep the UK in the EU, continuing: “The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is the will of the people. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now for remaining in the EU. A people’s vote may not happen, so vote now
BY RT NEWS
