The social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, seems to be having a very rough day, with thousands reporting that it’s down for them on web and mobile.
The first spike in reported problems on Downdetector happened at around 6.08am ET / 11.08am ET, with over 3,800 reports in the UK and over 11,000 in the US.
There’s been no official acknowledgement of issues from X yet, but it could be related to problems at Cloudflare, which says it’s its global network is “experiencing issues”.
Here’s everything we know about the outage so far…
The latest news
- X has been down for many since around 6.10am ET / 11.10am GMT
- The reports spiked on Downdetector at around 6.40am / 11.40am
- The problems appear to be related similar issues on Cloudflare
X seems to be down for everyone
X is definitely having a major outage today, with tens of thousands reporting the issue on Downdetector.
At the time of writing, there are 11,150 reports in the US and 3,895 in the UK on Downdetector. The issues are affecting both the mobile app and web browser version, with both showing a “posts aren’t loading right now” message for me.
The culprit could well be Cloudflare, which says its global network is “experiencing issues”…
Is Cloudflare to blame?
One of the potential culprits for today’s issues on X is Cloudflare – it’s seen a simultaneous spike on Downdetector, with over 7,000 reports in the UK and over 4,000 in the US.
Ironically, even Downdetector itself (which uses Cloudflare) was experiencing issues for a short period.
Cloudflare has also posted the notice above saying that it’s “continuing to investigate” an issue impacting multiple customers. In fact, it seems to be growing, with Cloudflare reporting “widespread 500 errors” with “Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing”.
Let’s hope this one isn’t too widespread…
It’s hitting both mobile and desktop
I’m feeling distinctly less distracted today than usual – and that’s because the X outage is hitting both the web version and mobile app.
Like many, I’m getting the “posts aren’t loading right now” message above when trying to refresh the mobile app.
The issues have lasted for around an hour now, but there’s promising signs on Downdetector that they may be easing…
Promising signs
Good news, it seems the problems on X could be improving – the website and app are now working for me and there’s been a sharp drop in reports on Downdetector (above) to almost half of their earlier peak.
X has been dropping in and out for me today, so it’s a bit early to call this outage over – but it seems to be moving in the right direction.
Strangely, the Cloudflare problems seem to be moving in the opposite direction though, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this one…
X still has the jitters
Despite the drop in reports on Downdetector, I’m still experiencing issues on X on both desktop and mobile – perhaps it’s spontaneously combusted from Google Gemini 3 hype.
Fortunately, that’s not the case for everyone, and the reports on Downdetector are now down to around 2,400 in the US and just over 2,000 in the UK, suggesting the issues are easing.
This corresponds to a similar drop on Cloudflare – so while there’s been no official connection between the two, it looks likely that Cloudflare issues have sparked the absence of memes and outrage on X today.
X isn’t the only site affected
While X has been the biggest hit by today’s issues – most likely stemming from Cloudflare’s acknowledged problems – it isn’t the only place you’ll have been seeing ‘internal server error’ messages.
On Downdetector, we’ve also seen spikes at the online multiplayer game League of Legends, a fanfiction site called Archive of our Own, plus Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail according to Reddit.
The timing suggests a connection to Cloudflare’s issues – the internet infrastructure giant said at 7.37am ET / 12.37pm GMT that it was “continuing to investigate this issue”, so expected to see other services you use (alongside X) playing up today.
Where do people go when X is down?
It seems that X fans don’t flock to Threads when their chosen social network is down, but Bluesky instead.
At least that’s the conclusion from a quick check on Google Trends (above) that the guys at Search Atlas pointed me towards.
While Bluesky has seen a spike in search interest today, Threads has stayed pretty flat. On paper, Threads is closer to X in style (more mainstream and centralized), but Bluesky may be closer the original Twitter in spirit.
Either way, both have likely benefited from today’s X issues, which are continuing to rumble on despite the promising drop in reports earlier…
X is down again for many
The X website and mobile app are back down again for me – although looking at Downdetector, that doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone.
In the US, we’re down to just over 1,600 reports, while in the UK it’s dropped to only 400 reports – so this is far from a complete blackout.
Fortunately, we seem to be over the peak that happened at around 6.40am ET / 11.40am ET, but if you’re still having trouble getting your daily dose of AI-generated video, Gemini 3 hype or Grok-based wisdom on X, you’re far from alone.
ChatGPT and Photopea also hit
It’s another one of those days where we learn how a critical point of cloud failure can cause rippling waves of instability across the web.
X continues to be down for many in the US and UK, and other services are experiencing aftershocks from the Cloudflare problems – including ChatGPT and Photopea.
Still, in better news, Cloudflare appears to have identified a fix – with the cloud giant stating on its updates page at 8.09am ET / 1.09pm GMT that “the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented”.
Let’s hope this does the trick for X and all the other sites that it’s likely hit…
The mobile app seems worst hit
For me and thousands of others, the mobile X app seems particularly affected by today’s outage.
On Downdetector, 61% of reports in the US and 60% in the UK say the main problem is the mobile app, although that may simply reflect how people use X.
The website has been more responsive for me today – but just as I say that, there’s been an enormous spike on Downdetector for X on all platforms…
Another huge spike in reports
Woah, just as we thought the X outage had hit its peak, there’s been another huge spike on Downdetector in the US and UK.
These issues have corresponded with a huge spike in reported issues on Cloudflare. In the US, we’re back over 13,500 reports in the US and over 3,400 in the UK.
It seems this outage is far from over – you can follow the corresponding Cloudflare issues, which seem to be the root of today’s woes, over on our separate liveblog.
Cloudflare reports ‘spike in unusual traffic’
As you can read in our Cloudflare liveblog, we’ve just been given this very intriguing statement from the cloud giant – which could reveal why today’s issues on X and many other sites have been so long-lasting.
“We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare’s network to experience errors,” the Cloudflare statement says.
“We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic. We will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis when it is ready to blog.cloudflare.com” the statement added.
This is pure speculation, but “a spike in unusual traffic” sounds to me very much like a DDoS attack, with Cloudflare blocking a giant one back in September. We’ll undoubtedly learn more once Cloudflare has fixed the problems…
Karma for Musk and X?
As noted by TechCrunch, today’s X outage comes seasoned with notes of karma, given Elon Musk gloated about the recent AWS outage that broke much of the internet (except his own social network).
Musk wrote on X around that time that “Messages on X chat are fully encrypted with no advertising hooks or strange ‘AWS dependencies,’ so I can’t read your messages even if someone put a gun to my head”.
Unfortunately, many of us now can’t read any messages at all on X, due to today’s Cloudflare issues. And those problems are continuing to grow, according to Downdetector…
Cloudflare is clearly the root cause
While there’s been no official statement from X about today’s issues, it’s pretty clear that the social media site’s problems – and also now on ChatGPT – are related to the Cloudflare wobbles, which are spiking at the same time.
The X problems have now settled at around 10,000 in the US and around 1,700 in the UK, and it’s still down on both the web and mobile app for me in the UK.
Cloudflare earlier said in a statement that it “saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11:20 UTC”, and its status says it’s “continuing to work on a fox for this issue”.
