Elon Musk’s social media platform X was back online after a brief outage that affected more than 19,000 US users on Sunday (February 1), according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
The disruption reportedly lasted about 45 minutes and was largely resolved.
Users reported issues including difficulty logging in, slow loading of feeds, and problems posting or viewing content. The outage appeared to affect users across multiple US cities, though the extent of international impact was not immediately clear.
Downdetector noted that the actual number of affected users may differ, as reports are submitted by users.
Previous outages
X previously faced a major technical outage on January 16, impacting thousands of users globally. Users reported issues with refreshing feeds and posting updates, with the mobile app displaying the error:
“Cannot retrieve posts at this time. Please try again later.”
Grok AI controversy
The outage comes amid ongoing scrutiny of X’s AI chatbot Grok. The tool faced international backlash after users were reportedly able to create sexualized deepfake images of women and minors using simple text prompts.
On January 26, the European Commission launched an investigation into X to determine whether the platform adequately assessed and mitigated risks related to Grok’s functionality. The probe follows similar actions by regulators in the UK, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, where the chatbot was temporarily blocked.
The Commission condemned the AI-generated images as “unlawful and appalling”, joining global criticism of the platform’s handling of sexually explicit content generated through Grok.
