X, the social media platform once called Twitter, crashed for tens of thousands of users across the United States on Friday morning.
At a Glance
- 78,244 outage reports flooded in by 10:16 a.m. ET
- Disruptions hit New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and other major metros
- Second blowout in one week after 24,000 users lost access Tuesday
- Why it matters: Repeated outages raise questions about platform stability under new ownership
Downdetector logged 78,244 reports as of 10:16 a.m. ET, painting a coast-to-coast map of dead feeds, failed uploads and login errors. Cities showing the deepest spikes included New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas, according to the outage tracker.
The incident follows a smaller but similar collapse on Tuesday, when 24,000 users said the site was unreachable. The back-to-back failures mark the most disruptive streak since Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X and slashed technical staff.
Michael A. Turner reported the fresh numbers Friday, noting the story is still developing.
Users vented in real time on rival platforms, sharing screenshots of error messages and hashtags such as \#TwitterDown and \#XDown. Some said the mobile app displayed a blank timeline, while others could not refresh notifications or post new content.
No official statement had appeared on X’s status page at publication time. The company dissolved its public-relations department last year, leaving users to crowd-source information through Downdetector and social-media chatter.
Friday’s outage pattern resembled Tuesday’s, with reports clustering around peak morning hours when commuters typically scroll headlines. Engineers who remained at the firm after widespread layoffs have previously blamed reduced redundancy and server tweaks for intermittent glitches.
The platform has suffered periodic instability since late 2022, when staff numbers fell from roughly 7,500 to fewer than 2,000. Musk has argued the lean structure cuts costs and speeds development, yet critics say it leaves little buffer when traffic surges or hardware falters.
Downdetector collects user-submitted error reports and refines them with speed-test data to estimate outage scope. The service does not distinguish between total blackout and partial degradation, so some of Friday’s 78,000 reports could reflect slower load times rather than complete failure.
Still, the spike dwarfed typical background noise, indicating a significant disruption. Outage totals began climbing shortly after 9 a.m. ET and peaked just after 10 a.m. Reports tapered but remained elevated through late morning.
Key timeline of recent X outages:
| Date | Reports to Downdetector | Peak Time (ET) |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday this week | 24,000 | ~9 a.m. |
| Friday this week | 78,244 | 10:16 a.m. |
X has not disclosed root causes for either incident. Internal dashboards accessible to remaining engineers showed elevated error rates on core timeline and authentication services during both episodes, according to prior News Of Philadelphia coverage.
Advertisers have grown wary of the uncertainty. Several large brands paused campaigns after a surge in hate speech last year, and intermittent outages add another risk metric when media planners decide where to place dollars.
For everyday users, the crashes highlight how much news, customer service and even emergency alerts now flow through a single privately controlled network. When that network falters, information streams fragment across Discord, Reddit, Instagram Threads and other alternatives.
Musk tweeted in August that X was testing video live-streams and banking features, signaling ambitions far beyond micro-blogging. Yet those expanded services will require rock-solid infrastructure, something the platform has struggled to maintain during the past seven days.
Key Takeaways
- X lost service for 78,244 users Friday, its worst outage since rebranding from Twitter
- The disruption spread nationwide, with New York, Los Angeles and Dallas showing heavy impact
- A smaller but similar failure affected 24,000 accounts on Tuesday, indicating recurring instability
- No official explanation has been released; users relied on Downdetector for real-time updates
Check News Of Philadelphia for updates as the situation develops.
