Topline
Social media platform X appeared down for many users Friday afternoon, as over 30,000 reports of outages were shared with DownDetector.com, signaling the latest of multiple disruptions the Elon Musk-owned site has experienced this month as Musk has vowed to add “major operational improvements.”
The outage occurred Friday afternoon. (Photo by ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images)
Key Facts
A whopping 30,466 outage reports were made on DownDetector at 4:28 p.m. EDT.
A majority of the reported problems concerned the X mobile app, while 37% of the issues were related to the platform’s website.
Outage reports sharply dropped around 4:40 p.m., reaching 1,502 on DownDetector.
X’s developer platform reported users may be experiencing issues with seeing their timeline, receiving direct messages and writing tweets.
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Key Background
X’s services have gone down multiple times in the last few weeks. The platform experienced an outage on May 22, when some 6,000 users reported issues with website and app functionality. The same day, X’s engineering team said it was aware of the issues and was experiencing a data center outage. More issues occurred May 24, lasting for hours and resulting in nearly 26,000 outage reports that caught Musk’s attention. The billionaire said in a post X needed “major operational improvements” and that he needed to be “super focused on X/xAI and Tesla.”
Tangent
Musk received backlash this year over his role as an adviser to President Donald Trump and as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, with shareholders in companies such as Tesla expressing concern that his time spent with the Trump administration was jeopardizing his focus on his businesses. Friday marked Musk’s last day as a special government employee, though the Tesla chief said he would continue visiting the White House and being “a friend and adviser” to Trump.
Further Reading
Musk Says He’s ‘Back To Spending 24/7 At Work’ After X Reports Latest Outage (Forbes)
Musk Says He’ll Be Trump’s ‘Friend And Adviser’ After Leaving White House (Forbes)
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