Social media platform X back up after global outage

Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was restored globally early on Thursday after outages were reported by users facing issues at the peak of the outage.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, were unable to view posts on the social media site with a message that said “Welcome to X!”. Reports of the platform’s troubles began spiking just before 0500 GMT on monitoring site Downdetector.

Users encountered loading issues on X Pro, formerly TweetDeck, with a message that said “Waiting for posts”.

Over 77,000 US users faced access issues with X and X Pro, according to Downdetector data. With no way to post on X, social media users published updates about the outage on rivals including Facebook, Threads, and Reddit, as well as Meta’s rival app, Threads.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including users.

In Pakistan, nearly 1,000 reports of outages were reported at 10:30am. Access to X was later restored for users in Pakistan a little after 12pm.

There has been no immediate comment from X, nor any indication of what caused the outage.

X is currently facing multiple headwinds, including an EU probe under a law designed to combat disinformation and hate, criticism of the platform’s response to recent rioting in Dublin, and an exodus of big-name advertisers.

Elon Musk’s company is now worth less than half of the $44 billion he paid for it in October 2022, according to internal documents sent to staff and reported by tech publication The Verge.

The $44 billion acquisition lead to several layoffs, including those of numerous engineers responsible for fixing and preventing service outages, sources have previously told Reuters.

A major outage on X was also reported by Downdetector in February, affecting thousands of users. User complaints shared online included being unable to post messages, being told they had exceeded a daily limit of posts, and the inability to send direct messages.