Elon Musk’s X Faces Widespread Outage Amid Global Scrutiny

On Friday, January 16, Elon Musk’s service X experienced a disruption, resulting in a large number of users being unable to access the social network. Error messages and hanging loading screens quickly spread across the service, with outage trackers recording a sharp increase in user reports. According to Variety, users attempting to open X encountered messages like “Something went wrong. Please try reloading,” often followed by an endlessly spinning indicator preventing access. Data from Downdetector showed a rapid rise in problem reports.

Earlier on January 16, over 100,000 users reported issues with X. Data indicated that 56% of complaints were related to the mobile app, 33% to the website, and approximately 10% pointed to server connection issues. As of publication, the issues have been resolved, although there have been no official statements on the cause of the outage.

Authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia had previously blocked Grok’s operations in their countries. Previously, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that authorities should “consider all options,” including a potential ban on the X platform. The UK also held discussions with Canada and Australia about potentially banning Elon Musk’s social network.