Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced a significant outage for the second time within 24 hours on Saturday, May 24, 2025. Tens of thousands of users across the United States, India, and other countries reported issues ranging from login failures to inability to refresh feeds and access key features.
What Happened During the Outage?
The disruption began around 6:09 PM IST (8:39 AM EDT), with over 25,000 users in the US alone reporting problems on outage monitoring platforms like Downdetector. Core functions such as the ‘For You’ feed, ‘Following’ tab, notifications, and login services were affected. Indian users also faced widespread difficulties, including trouble loading the app and website, refreshing timelines, and sending messages.
This outage followed another disruption earlier in the week, which was linked to a fire at a data center leased by X in Hillsboro, Oregon. The fire involved a battery room and caused smoke damage, prompting emergency responses and impacting server operations.
The Impact on Users and the Platform
Users expressed frustration over repeated outages, with many reporting error messages like “Something went wrong. Try reloading” and experiencing delays in receiving notifications or posting content. Both desktop and mobile platforms were affected, disrupting millions of daily active users globally.
The outages have raised concerns about the reliability and stability of X’s infrastructure, especially after Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition in 2022. Since then, the platform has undergone major backend changes, including shutting down its Sacramento data center and relocating servers to Portland and Atlanta.
Elon Musk’s Response and Future Plans
In response to the outages, Elon Musk acknowledged the platform’s uptime issues, admitting that “major operational improvements need to be made.” He revealed that he is working around the clock, spending “24/7 at work and sleeping in conference, server, and factory rooms” to focus on critical technology rollouts for X, his AI venture xAI, and Tesla.
Musk also highlighted that failover redundancy systems, designed to prevent such outages by rerouting traffic during failures, did not function as expected during this week’s disruptions. This has underscored the urgent need for infrastructure upgrades and better disaster recovery mechanisms.
Background: Changes Since Musk’s Acquisition
Since Elon Musk took over X in late 2022, the platform has seen significant operational shifts:
The Sacramento data center was closed, with over 2,500 server racks moved to Portland and Atlanta.
The platform rebranded from Twitter to X, aiming to transform into an “everything app” combining social media, payments, and more.
Several outages and technical glitches have occurred, including a major cyberattack in March 2025, which Musk publicly acknowledged.
What This Means for Indian Users
Indian users faced similar disruptions, with many unable to log in or refresh content during the outage. This comes amid ongoing tensions between X and the Indian government, where the platform recently blocked over 8,000 accounts following government orders, sparking debates on free speech and content regulation.
The repeated outages have added to user frustration, especially as X tries to maintain its position in India’s fast-growing social media market.
Looking Ahead: Can X Stabilize?
The recent outages highlight the challenges X faces in maintaining a robust and reliable platform while undergoing rapid transformation and expansion. Musk’s commitment to working “24/7” signals a serious effort to fix these issues, but users and industry watchers will be closely monitoring how quickly and effectively these improvements are implemented.