Elon Musk-led X suffers brief outage; thousands of users unable to login, use website

Thousands of X users found themselves facing technical issues on Saturday after the platform suffered an outage. The cause of the outage is not yet known.

According to data shared by Downdetector, there were more than 8,200 reports submitted at the peak of the outage — at 10:31 am Eastern Standard Time (8:01 am in India). The website, which tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including users, showed less than 164 such reports from the US an hour later (9:00 am in India).

The disruption also prompted a flurry of social media posts with many wondering if the glitch was universal.

“Is Twitter down for you? I’m having issues with posts loading and DownDetector is showing a spike of reports. Methinks X is down/broken,” concluded one user.

“Anyone having problems with X/twitter? Posts aren't loading...” informed a second.

“X is down. Reply if you can see this,” urged a third.

It is pertinent to note that these messages were all posted to the social media platform in question.

The development also comes mere days after the social media platform was banned in Brazil amidst a lengthy feud with Elon Musk. The restrictions came as part of efforts to stop far-right users from spreading misinformation on social media. Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro however insist that the ban is a proof of political persecution. With Bolsonaro barred from running for office until 2030, many have accused the judiciary and the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva-led government of colluding to silence their movement.

Bolsonaro supporters flooded the main boulevard in Sao Paulo for an Independence Day rally on Saturday. Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has also urged Brazilians to turn out in droves for the rally, resharing someone else's post claiming that X’s ban had awakened people “to the fact that freedom isn’t free and needs to be fought for.”

(With inputs from agencies)