^{Source: Siasat.com}

Elon Musk’s X Experiences Significant Downtime, Prompting Operational Concerns

The social media platform X—formerly known as Twitter and now owned by Elon Musk—experienced a significant outage on Saturday morning, disrupting access for tens of thousands of users worldwide. According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, more than 25,000 users reported issues starting around 8:30 a.m. ET. Reports ranged from problems with the mobile app to total inaccessibility via desktop.

By 9:55 a.m., the platform showed signs of recovery, with the number of user complaints dropping to around 2,000. Most of the technical glitches were resolved by 11 a.m., although some users continued to report intermittent access issues well into the late morning.

This marks the second outage within the same week. The earlier incident occurred on Thursday, disrupting access for a smaller number of users but hinting at recurring problems within X’s technical infrastructure.

Musk Acknowledges Platform Instability

In response to the downtime, Musk posted on X, stating:

“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made. The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

Musk—who also heads Tesla and SpaceX—added that he was returning to around-the-clock work routines, saying:

“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused, as we have critical technologies rolling out.”

The specific cause of the outage remains unclear, as the company did not immediately respond to press inquiries. However, Musk’s remarks suggest that the failover systems—designed to prevent service disruptions—did not activate as intended, highlighting potential weaknesses in the platform’s reliability.

A Pattern of Downtime Since the Twitter Acquisition

Since acquiring the platform in October 2022 for $44 billion, Elon Musk has rebranded Twitter into "X" and undertaken major overhauls, including widespread staff cuts, changes in moderation policies, and system revamps. But these changes appear to have come at a cost.

In March 2024, X suffered another widespread outage that Musk later attributed to a “massive cyberattack.” He added that while the platform faces cyber threats daily, the March attack was “done with a lot of resources,” indicating it was more sophisticated than usual.

Frequent outages have not only affected user experience but also raised red flags among tech analysts and advertisers. Downtime directly impacts engagement rates and platform reliability—two critical factors for advertisers determining where to allocate budgets.

Downtime in Numbers

• 25,000+ user complaints during Saturday’s peak downtime
• 21,000+ issues logged within the first 30 minutes of the outage
• Platform recovery began around 9:55 a.m. ET, with most issues resolved by 11:00 a.m.
• 2nd outage reported within five days

What This Means for the Future of X

Musk’s ownership of X has been both transformative and turbulent. While he promises innovation and open-sourced algorithms, the platform’s stability remains a concern. With critical technologies “rolling out,” as Musk claims, ensuring robust operational reliability becomes even more essential.

Experts believe that the ongoing outages, unless addressed quickly and thoroughly, could lead to long-term reputational damage and further loss of advertiser trust. For Musk, who is also managing several high-stakes ventures across industries, maintaining consistent uptime on X will require not just engineering fixes but likely leadership focus and resource allocation.

As of now, users are back online—but the question lingers: for how long?