Elon Musk’s X social media platform experienced widespread outages globally on Friday afternoon, according to Downdetector data. The online platform reported over 35,000 X outages at 4:19 p.m. ET, dropping to less than 1,000 by 4:50 p.m. ET. As of 7 p.m. ET, the number of outages had dropped to around 200.
This marks the second outage in just over a week for X, following a major issue on May 22 that affected users worldwide. The platform experienced problems with messages failing to load, stagnant timelines, and posts only appearing after refreshing the page.
X has faced criticism and regulatory scrutiny since Elon Musk acquired the platform in October 2022 for $44 billion. Musk rebranded the company as “X” in July 2023, part of his vision to create an “everything app.” The change has led to mass layoffs, increased paid features, and concerns over content moderation policies.
Major outages have occurred at X before, including widespread disruptions in 2020, 2022, and under Musk’s ownership since late 2022. These issues often stem from internal infrastructure changes, high user traffic, or software updates. Experts warn that Musk’s reduction of Twitter’s engineering staff following his acquisition made the platform more vulnerable to breakdowns.
Twitter was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams as a microblogging platform for short messages called “tweets.” It quickly gained popularity for its simplicity and real-time communication, playing a key role in news dissemination and global events.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-x-down-2079216