On Thursday evening, users of Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, encountered widespread technical issues that prevented their timelines from updating. A significant number of users have also reported problems receiving notifications for new posts from accounts they follow.
The issue appeared to originate around 6 p.m. Eastern on May 8, and persists as of the following morning. It is affecting both the web and mobile versions of the platform, as confirmed by multiple affected users. Efforts to resolve the issue by switching devices or browsers, or even signing up for the premium subscription service, X Premium, have proven ineffective.
Online forums saw numerous users reaching out to express their frustrations overnight. On Reddit discussions, individuals from different locations reported the same issue, with one German user stating they had received no new notifications since 10 p.m. local time the previous night.
Outage-tracking site Downdetector registered a sharp increase in user reports concerning X during the past several hours, underscoring the scale of the disruption.
This latest outage echoes previous incidents where X faced significant downtime and functional barriers for users. The most recent major outage occurred in March, affecting global users who found themselves suddenly disconnected and unable to interact with content. Elon Musk at the time attributed these issues, without supporting evidence, to a cyberattack.
Such stability issues at X follow from severe rounds of layoffs implemented post-acquisition. Musk acquired the platform, previously known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022. He subsequently reduced staffing levels drastically, cutting approximately 80% of the company’s workforce from 7,500 to around 1,300 employees. By January 2023, this left the company with only 550 full-time engineers. Further layoffs occurred in November 2024, hitting primarily the engineering team.
X has not issued an official statement regarding the current issue or its anticipated resolution timeline.
