X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, experienced a significant outage this afternoon, affecting thousands of users.

Down Detector data indicates that issues with the social media site owned by Elon Musk began surfacing around 1:30 PM GMT, impacting users on a global scale.

In the UK alone, over 10,000 issues have been reported, while in the US, the number exceeds 42,000.

The exact cause of the outage is still unknown, but the majority of complaints—57%—are related to the X app.

Additionally, 20% of users are encountering problems with the feed or timeline, and 17% struggle with accessing the website.

When attempting to use the iOS app, The Daily Mail received an error message stating, “Posts aren’t loading right now.”

On the X website, tweets also aren’t loading, while the error message reads: ‘Something went wrong. Try reloading.’

While the reason for the outage remains unclear, based on outages in the past, it may be linked to scheduled maintenance by Cloudflare – the network upon which X runs. 

X (formerly Twitter) has crashed for thousands of users this afternoon. According to Down Detector, the problems with Elon Musk’s social media platform started at around 13:30 GMT, and are affecting users globally

With X down, many users have flocked to Meta’s rival app, Threads, to discuss the outage. 

‘Is it just me or is X down again?’ one user asked. 

Another added: ‘Seems my X (formerly Twitter) is down cos I can’t load anything on my phone and on my computer…is someone experiencing the same?’

And one joked: ‘When Twitter down this where I come.’

This isn’t the first time X has crashed in recent months – although it remains unclear if the latest issues are related to Cloudflare. 

The outage comes just two months after X crashed twice, following repeated Cloudflare blackouts. 

On 5 December, Cloudflare experienced a massive outage, knocking dozens of major websites offline. 

Among those affected were Zoom, Canva, Discord, LinkedIn, Deliveroo, Substack, Shopify, Coinbase and Vinted. 

So far, more than 10,000 problems have been logged on DownDetector in the UK

Over in the US, there have been more than 42,000 reports over the X outage

On Reddit, one user posted: ‘Here we go again, it’s down!’

Someone relied: ‘Business haulted. Second time in a month. It’s too much for service as crucial as this. Something needs to be done.’ 

While a third said: ‘imagine how much money businesses are losing.’ 

It marked the second outage in less than a month for Cloudflare, which powers internet requests for millions of websites. 

Shortly after, Cloudflare admitted in a blog post that its network began ‘experiencing significant failures to deliver core network traffic’. 

The Silicon Valley company is the foundation of an estimated fifth of all websites worldwide. 

Richard Ford, chief technical officer at Integrity360, said Friday’s episode underlines how much of the internet now depends on a handful of infrastructure providers.

‘For businesses, today is a wake‑up call,’ the expert said. ‘Relying entirely on a single provider for critical infrastructure is a fragile strategy. 

‘Today’s disruption underscores something many of us in cybersecurity and tech have long warned about – as the internet has grown more complex, a handful of infrastructure providers end up holding unexpectedly large power over its functioning. 

‘Cloudflare sits at the heart of that, providing CDN, proxying, routing, DNS and caching so that websites can stay fast, secure and resilient under load.

‘When a provider like this fails, whether due to internal error, configuration change or external attack, the ripple effects hit far more than just a few sites. 

‘What feels like one outage to a user is actually a systemic failure affecting traffic flows across many unrelated organisations.’