The social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, experienced a major global service disruption this afternoon, leaving millions of users unable to access the service. The widespread crash affected both the website and mobile applications across multiple continents.
Scale and Scope of the Disruption
According to data from the outage-tracking website Down Detector, the problems began at approximately 15:14 GMT. The issue rapidly escalated into a global event. In the United Kingdom alone, more than 19,000 individual problem reports were logged by users struggling to connect.
The situation was even more pronounced in the United States, where nearly 75,000 issues were reported. A breakdown of the UK reports reveals that 58% of users encountered problems specifically with the X mobile app, while 34% reported failures when trying to load the website. The remaining 7% indicated issues centred on their feed or timeline not refreshing.
User Experience and Failed Access Attempts
Attempts to access the platform were met with persistent errors. The Daily Mail confirmed that efforts to load the X website resulted in a 'connection timed out' error message. Similarly, the official X app for iPhone failed to load content, displaying only the frustrating 'spinning wheel of death' on users' screens.
This outage underscores the platform's role as a primary communication tool for news, public discourse, and networking for millions worldwide. Its sudden unavailability caused immediate disruption for individuals, businesses, and media outlets that rely on it for real-time updates.
Potential Cause and Infrastructure
While the exact technical reason for the crash was not immediately confirmed by X's engineering teams, early analysis suggests a likely link to scheduled maintenance by Cloudflare. Cloudflare provides critical content delivery and security network services upon which X's infrastructure operates. Interruptions or configuration changes during such maintenance windows can sometimes lead to cascading failures that take services offline.
Global outages of major tech platforms, while infrequent, highlight the dependencies built on centralised digital infrastructure. The incident serves as a reminder of the fragility of online ecosystems that billions have come to depend on for daily communication and information.
