X down – latest: Twitter and Grok not working in another major outage

X, formerly Twitter, experienced a major outage on Friday morning.

By Friday afternoon, service appears to have restored for many users.

Those affected reported that the site and its app did not load at all, with visitors instead saw a blank screen. Some users also saw Cloudflare error pages – though the issue was at X itself, and the problem did not seem to be a repeat of recent Cloudflare technical issues that did take X offline.

Often, during outages at X, the site itself will load but it will show no posts.

Tracking website Down Detector showed a huge spike in reports of problems at X at around 3pm in the UK, or 10am eastern time.

The issues appeared to be present right across the world and on the various ways of accessing X, such as its website and mobile apps.

Key Points

• Everything you need to know about X outage
• Technical problems come amid widespread criticism of X and Musk
• Outage appears to be intermittent

X service restored, blog is now paused

21:33 , Graig Graziosi

As of Friday afternoon, X and Grok service appear to be restored for a majority of users.

Stay with The Independent for more breaking news.

Hello and welcome...

15:42 , Andrew Griffin

... to our live coverage of a major outage at X, formerly Twitter, as well as on its Grok AI chatbot.

X does not have a status platform for updates

15:42 , Andrew Griffin

Unlike many other platforms, X does not operate a public-facing status page to give updates on outages and other problems. It does have one for its developer platform, which claimed during the outage that “all systems are operational”.

This week's problems follow widespread criticism of Grok chatbot

15:43 , Andrew Griffin

The outage follows another major technical issue at X this week. Both come amid loud criticism of the Elon Musk-owned platform, and its chatbot Grok, over the fact that it was creating violent and abusive images, often of women and children.

Grok – which is also available in a standalone form, in addition to being accessible as an account on X – also went down in the outage. While the chatbot would occasionally appear to load, it showed an array of error messages.

Musk takeover brought fears of outages – but it has largely stayed online

15:43 , Andrew Griffin

When Mr Musk bought what was then Twitter, in 2022, there were widespread worries that his decision to fire the majority of the company’s staff would stop the site from working as usual. In the time since, however, X has largely stayed online though it has intermittently experienced technical issues.

Latest on X outage

15:46 , Andrew Griffin

Here’s the latest from our sister site, Bulletin, if you’d like to read about the outage in brief.

Outage appears to be intermittent

15:52 , Andrew Griffin

Occasionally, and anecdotally, the site appears to have come back a few times in the hour or so that it’s been down. But then it breaks again. The outage appears to be intermittent for now.

Site might work on some devices and not others

16:05 , Andrew Griffin

(Anecdotal, again, as below.) Right now, Twitter appears to be working for me on my phone, but not on my desktop. If you need to get online, it might be worth trying on another device or app.

X appears to be coming back – slowly

16:43 , Andrew Griffin

It is still slow and unreliable, but X appears to be coming back slightly. Reports of problems are reducing, and anecdotally it appears to be loading. (And there are lots of new posts there when it does, so other people must be able to get online, too.)

Musk and X accounts silent on outage

16:45 , Andrew Griffin

The official X accounts of both X itself and its owner Elon Musk are yet to post about the outage. The latter has posted – about the kind of political issues that largely dominate his feed these days – but not addressed the problem.

(Still, on his most recent post, the first reply that shows for me is someone asking “What’s up with the app?”)

Cloudflare does not appear to be cause of a broader problem

16:47 , Andrew Griffin

On some tracking websites, such as Down Detector, Cloudflare appears to be struggling. It might be – but, if it is, then it does not appear to be affecting other sites.

The uptick in reports about Cloudflare may be because the X website is sometimes showing Cloudflare error messages. But those error messages make clear that the problem is at X.

All of which is to say: it doesn’t look like this new outage is another big Cloudflare problem. (Which have, in the past, taken down X and other big websites.)

Outage reports taper off on Friday afternoon

19:39 , Graig Graziosi

After a spike of reports that X and Grok were down this morning, it appears that service has been largely restored as of Friday afternoon.

The bulk of the reports to Down Detector were logged between 10 and 11 am. By approximately 2pm, reports had dropped to fewer than 1,000 users experiencing service interruptions.

Down Detector collects reports from users, so its numbers may not fully reflect the experiences of all users of a given service.

Questions remain over what caused the outage on Friday

20:20 , Graig Graziosi

Even though service appears to be restored for most X users, it’s still not clear what caused the outage in the first place.

Previous outages have been linked to other major service disruptions, like the Cloudflare outage in November.

But this incident doesn’t appear to be linked to any similar events.

Elon Musk mum on the outage, but X engineer shares some insight

21:00 , Graig Graziosi

As of Friday afternoon, X CEO Elon Musk hasn’t addressed a widespread site outage users reported on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Christopher Stanley, an X engineer, seemed to acknowledge the outage in a pair of posts.

He first posted “testing,” and later posted an image of an Elmo puppet surrounded by fire, though its unclear what he was communicating.

Then, around 2pm, Stanley posted a message saying “What it feels like trying to understand legacy code/infra,” along with an incomprehensible, jargon-filled video of a man explaining how a piece of equipment works.

What it feels like trying to understand legacy code/infra pic.twitter.com/HWd1NBJHUQ

— Christopher Stanley (@cstanley) January 16, 2026