At a Glance
- X suffered its second large-scale outage this week, with nearly 80,000 reports on Down Detector.
- The platform began failing around 10 a.m. Eastern on January 16, 2026, showing error messages or refusing to load.
- The disruption follows criticism over Grok, xAI’s chatbot, generating nonconsensual sexual and violent imagery from real photos.
- Why it Matters: Users and advertisers face renewed uncertainty about X’s stability after mass layoffs under Elon Musk.
X is down again. The social network formerly called Twitter stopped working for thousands of users on January 16, 2026, marking the second major outage in a single week.
Outage Timeline
Down Detector logged almost 80,000 outage reports starting at roughly 10 a.m. Eastern. Visitors saw blank pages, endless loading loops, or cryptic error messages the article describes as “gang signs.” The platform remained inaccessible at publication time.
This week’s first outage had already rattled users who rely on X for news, customer service, and real-time conversation. A repeat failure so soon amplifies concerns about infrastructure reliability.
Staff Cuts and Infrastructure Strain
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he slashed headcount across engineering and trust-and-safety teams. Critics warned that lean teams might struggle to keep servers stable or respond quickly to failures. The site has stayed online for the most part, yet last year delivered several noticeable blackouts.
Grok Controversy Simmers
The latest crash lands amid fresh backlash over Grok, the xAI chatbot embedded inside X. Users discovered they could prompt the tool to alter real photos of women and children into nonconsensual sexual or violent images. The revelation has renewed scrutiny of content-moderation capabilities on a platform already operating with fewer human reviewers.
What Happens Next
News Of Philadelphia has contacted X for comment. No timeline for full restoration has been provided.
Key Takeaways
- X’s second outage in one week exposes ongoing reliability risks after deep staff reductions.
- Nearly 80,000 user reports highlight the scale of disruption.
- The crash overlaps with controversy over AI-generated harmful imagery, intensifying pressure on the platform.
