X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has experienced several outages in recent times, impacting users globally. While currently functioning as of , a significant disruption occurred on , stemming from a data center outage. Prior to that, issues began surfacing on .
Data Center Outage and Impact
The most recent major incident, confirmed by X’s engineering team via a platform post, was attributed to a data center outage. The engineering team stated, “X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.” This outage affected users across multiple countries, including India and the United States. While the impact in India was relatively contained, with approximately 266 user complaints reported at its peak, the US experienced more substantial disruption.
Reports of issues peaked around , with over 6,000 reports globally logged by tracking service Downdetector. Approximately 57% of those reports related to app difficulties, while 38% concerned website access, and 5% cited server connection errors. In the United States, complaints initially rose around , peaking at over 5,800 reports before declining to around 630 by .
Underlying Cause: Fire at Oregon Data Center
Investigations following the outage pointed to a fire at a data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, leased by X. According to anonymous sources reported by Wired, emergency services were dispatched to address the fire. This data center failure was the primary cause of the widespread service disruption.
User Reports and Affected Locations
User reports, as tracked by Istheservicedown.com, indicate a geographically diverse range of affected locations. In the 15 days preceding , Paris, France, had the highest number of reported issues with 20 reports. Other cities with significant reports included Quito, Ecuador (4 reports), Lyon, France (4 reports), Bordeaux, France (4 reports), Marseille, France (4 reports), and São Paulo, Brazil (4 reports). Several other cities reported between 2 and 4 issues, including locations in England, Spain, Italy, and the United States.
Users experiencing problems reported a variety of issues, including difficulties signing in, problems with direct messages, and general website and app inaccessibility. Many users took to the platform – when accessible – to express their frustration, with some responding with humor or sarcasm.
Platform Status and User Sentiment
X, described as an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages known as “tweets,” allows access from various devices and platforms, including iOS, Android, Blackberry, and web browsers. As of , Downdetector reports indicate no current problems with the platform. However, user ratings over the past three months average 2.76 out of 5, based on 15,075 ratings, suggesting ongoing user dissatisfaction.
Previous Outage Context
The July 2024 outage, caused by a faulty update from Crowdstrike, which impacted PCs worldwide, serves as a reminder of the fragility of online services and the potential for widespread disruption. While not directly related to the incident, it highlights the interconnectedness of software and infrastructure and the potential for cascading failures.
X’s developer platform status page indicated “some systems are experiencing degraded performance” during the outage, but no specific timeline for a fix was initially provided. The platform briefly returned to functionality on Saturday morning, only to experience further issues, with reports reaching 25,000 at their height before stabilizing.
