X suffers major global outage, leaving users to blank screens

X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered a major global outage on Friday, leaving users across several regions unable to access the platform via its website or mobile applications.

Visitors attempting to load X were met with blank screens, while others encountered Cloudflare error pages, indicating a widespread disruption to the service. Unlike some previous incidents, the platform did not partially load or display empty timelines, suggesting a more severe technical failure.

Outage tracking website Down Detector recorded a sharp spike in user complaints at around 4:00pm, Nigerian time, corresponding to 10am Eastern Time in the United States.

Reports indicated that the disruption was global in scale, affecting users across multiple continents and across all major access points, including web browsers and mobile apps.

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While Cloudflare error messages were visible to some users, the issue was understood to be internal to X and not related to recent Cloudflare outages that had temporarily affected the platform in the past.

X does not operate a public-facing status page to provide real-time updates on service disruptions. Its developer status page, which remained active during the outage, stated that “all systems are operational,” offering little clarity to users experiencing the shutdown.

The latest outage comes just days after another major technical issue affected the platform, adding to growing concerns about the reliability of the Elon Musk-owned company. The disruption also follows renewed criticism of X and its artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, over the generation of violent and abusive images, including content involving women and children.

Since Mr Musk acquired the platform in 2022, then known as Twitter, concerns have persisted over whether large-scale staff layoffs would undermine the platform’s operational stability. Although X has largely remained online since the takeover, it has continued to experience intermittent technical failures, reigniting questions about its long-term resilience.

As of the time of reporting, X had not issued an official public statement explaining the cause of the outage or providing a timeline for restoration.

Royal Ibeh is a senior journalist with years of experience reporting on Nigeria’s technology and health sectors. She currently covers the Technology and Health beats for BusinessDay newspaper, where she writes in-depth stories on digital innovation, telecom infrastructure, healthcare systems, and public health policies.

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