X (Twitter) was down — what happened during major outage that stretched into weekend

Service returning once more

At the risk of jinxing it again, it looks like X (formerly Twitter) is coming back online for many users. I was able to access the site on mobile and desktop. Reports on DownDetector are falling rapidly, sitting at around 1,000 at 11:40 a.m. ET on Saturday after peaking at over 26,000 earlier this morning.

We're not out of the woods yet, though. There's no telling whether we'll see more spikes throughout the weekend. Issues have been plaguing X since Thursday, with many users unable to sign in, send messages, or access core functions such as loading new posts. The disruption's cause remains unconfirmed for now, but Wired reported it may stem from a fire at a data center in Oregon.

X outage continues

X is currently suffering mass outages as thousands of users report issues with the site and app. Outage reports on DownDetector have skyrocketed to over 25,000 as we approach 10 a.m. ET this Saturday morning. The bulk of reports (68%) stem from trying to use the app, but the website is seeing issues as well.

When trying to load new posts, an error message pops up: "Something went wrong. Try reloading."

Reports spiking back up

It appears I spoke too soon. Outage reports for X spiked to over 6,000 just after 8 a.m. on Saturday morning after hovering around 100 most of the night. We're not out of the woods yet. I tried accessing X on mobile and PC and was met with an error page. Meanwhile, the developer status page is still showing degraded performance.

X comes back online for many

Weekend editor Alyse here, taking over! After being out of commission for most of Thursday and Friday, X seems to have finally come back online for many. According to Down Detector, functionality returned early Saturday night, with outage reports now hovering at under 100 from a peak of over 1,000 on Friday at 11 a.m. ET. X has yet to comment on the outage's cause, but here's hoping whatever fix they implemented lasts.

No end in sight

There is no apparent end in sight for the ongoing problems on X.

Yes, the main feeds are back on and DMs appear to be working, if you can login.

With 2FA seemingly broken, plenty of people have struggled to even get back into the social platform regardless of whether it's working again.

The Status page still has the Login listed as degraded.

The only official statement has come from the X Engineering account from yesterday (May 22) that acknowledged people facing issues, but has not tweeted since.

The steady reports around 500 on Down Detector have continued apace since about 1 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, May 22.

We'll keep an eye on things but it's not clear when or if things will actually get repaired.

Here are some "workarounds" provided X's AI Grok:

• Log in using alternative methods (e.g., Google, Facebook, or Apple accounts) if possible.
• Access X via a web browser like Chrome or Safari, as mobile apps are more affected.
• Update the X app, clear its cache, or restart your device.
• Avoid logging out, as two-factor authentication issues may prevent re-login.

Maybe try some alternatives

With X being down, many of your internet scrolling habits are probably all out of sorts. If you spend much time seeking information on X, you might not know what to do with yourself.

Thankfully, there are tons of Twitter / X alternatives where you can get your social media fix.

But if you don't feel like doomscrolling through another social network, we have other ideas. Why not subscribe to Tom's Guide on TikTok and watch some of our best short-form videos? Or, if you prefer longer content, maybe look at Tom's Guide on YouTube, which is filled with reviews and other content you'll love.

If that doesn't work, maybe you should read our in-depth Bluesky guide to help you learn more about the fast-growing social network.

On it rolls

For the most part, if you are still logged into X, it should be working as it normally would. The feeds are updating and you can click around to your heart's content.

However, if the outage caused you to logout or if you were forced to do so, you may not be able to log back in.

The two-factor authentication system appears down, and we've seen complaints from users claiming that X support had to manually turn off 2FA for their account to be able to login.

There are appears to be no immediate relief in sight beyond carping at the X support chats, which we're certain are inundated today.

A change

After multiple hours of a quasi-status quo with DMs not working and the API being listed as degraded, we finally have a bit of a change.

On the dev status page, the API is listed as normal, but now there is a new problem.

"Login with X (OAuth) and other X platform login flows are experiencing degraded performance."

Under incident history, the site says this new issue popped up around 10:35 a.m. Pacific.

However, we've had reports of login flaws well before that.

One reader reached out to Tom's Guide saying, " I can't log in since last night and when I click the 2factor Authentication it just brings me back to the same screen."

Similarly we've seen multiple comments on DownDetector and Reddit with users saying that they're able to login on the browser but not the app, or vice versa and some claiming they haven't been able to logon at all.

It's unclear if DMs are back to normal, though that seems to be the message here.

X outage recap and where are we now

We first noticed outage reports on DownDetector around 11:00 a.m. Pacific starting May 22.

For about two hours, the social platform X was slow loading, wouldn't load at all or was displaying out of order tweets in the feeds.

The Developer status page listed the API as having downgraded performance.

After that initial spike, reports dropped significantly from a high of nearly 5,000 to a steady stream of about a 1,000 which has lasted since around 1:00 pm Pacific.

Since the initial spike, the main feeds of X have seemed to work mostly fine save the occasional slow down.

The main problem appears to be DMs and chats which either aren't loading at all or are stuck in pending.

Late in the evening, the Oregonian reported that a data center in Hillsboro, could be behind the outage. Apparently X rents space in the center that was on fire for at least five hours.

At least one person reached out to Tom's Guide saying that two-factor authentication has also been affected.

X has not released any statements about the problems. CEO Elon Musk was largely quiet yesterday but returned today to mostly post about solar power, underneath which there are tons of response demanding he fix the DMs and platform.

Users are suggesting a DM workaround

As we pass the 24-hour mark since the first reports began to emerge, many X users still aren't able to access or send direct messages. Some have begun sharing a reported workaround by toggling on and off the "filter low-quality messages" option in settings.

To find it, open X's Settings menu (providing you can log in) and navigate to Privacy and safety. From there, tap on Direct Messages and click/tap the checkbox for Filter low-quality messages.

Users are suggesting those affected should toggle it on, then navigate away from the page to save the choice before going back in and unchecking it and reversing the process.

I've not been able to confirm this method works, but if you want to give it a try, it could help you.

X still hasn't restored full functionality

We're coming up on 24 hours since the first reports started to arrive and it looks like X.com still hasn't restored full functionality to its app or website.

Kyle Wiggers, AI Editor over at TechCrunch is reporting that like many users, he is unable to load messages and view certain posts or an updated timeline without a webpage refresh.

Reports first started to surface Thursday afternoon around 2pm Eastern on DownDetector and we're still not seeing a full confirmation from X that everything is back to normal.

Reports are falling fast

As you can see from the screenshot above, the reports from DownDetector have fallen fast from yesterday's spike.

It looks like there are still some lingering problems for some users, with the emphasis seemingly around the East Coast and New York in particular.

Direct messages still affected

The issues affecting X.com seem to be largely resolved but they're not entirely over. The company's AI chatbot Grok is busy responding to users in real time, explaining that some users are still unable to display or send direct messages.

According to the AI, X is still working to fix the problem but anecdotally some members of the Tom's Guide team have confirmed to me they're still unable to load their DMs.

Fire at a data center reportedly to blame for issues

Although the main outage appears to be over, some lingering problems are still affecting X.com users around the world.

The cause of the problem appears to be a fire at a data center in Hillsboro, Oregon that broke out Thursday morning. The data center is leased by X and emergency services were called to fight the fire.

Some unconfirmed reports have indicated the fire started in a battery room and has impacted nearly 6,000 users globally.

Twitter's problems show no signs of stopping

As of 5 p.m. Pacific, X is still showing over 1,000 reports on DD and the developer status page still shows degraded performance in the platforms API.

At this point, it still seems to be mostly affecting DMs, but I have seen comments suggesting that ads are broken as well.

We have reached out to X for a response, and will update if we receive one but they rarely respond.

Problems have lasted over 5 hours

It is currently 4 p.m. Pacific, and the X issues have lasted for just over five hours having started around 11 a.m. Pacific.

So far, there has been no official word from X or its overlord Musk.

Most of the problems appear to be have cleared up except for DMs where people are reporting that their X chats are not opening or sending.

One poster one Down Detector said they have more than 5 messages sitting in pending.

Speaking of DD, reports never completely went away going as low as 500, and as of this writing its sitting around 1,000 claims.

No DMs?

Despite a crawl of reports hovering around 1,000 now on DD, Twitter itself appears to be mostly back up.

However, we're seeing complaints from a number of people that DMs aren't working, something that was popping up a bit when X first started having problems today.

We tried a couple of test DMs on our account but things seemed to be working.

If you're at work, do not click Twitter DMs in the trending tab. While there are complaints in the feed...there are other posts as well, you know which ones.

Outage won't quite go away

The outage hasn't quite reached the heights that it did earlier today but it won't quite go away either.

It's been hovering around 800 or more reports for the last hour or so, and people are still claiming that it's having problems.

The status page currently still shows degraded performance though it does appear to be loading faster for us.

No clear cause

Unlike the March outage, today's problem has no clear cause as X representatives have remained largely quiet.

Elon Musk blamed a massive cyber attack in March but he's been fairly quiet on today, reposting a couple of times and replying to a couple of tweets. A near silent day by his usual standards.

Keeping an eye on X

You may be wondering, why keep an eye on X even though reports have dropped down so significantly?

Partly, it's because during the last outage in March, the cycle was very similar where it would go down and then pop back up again for several hours.

We noticed that despite the drop, the reports were starting to go back up a bit.

We'll see if it gets as large as spike as the last one which hit over 5700.

Reports dip again

Over on DD, reports have dramatically drop down to under 600 recently.

It's not clear if the outage is actually over though. The developer status page is still showing degraded performance.

That said, the platform does seem to be loading better in the last quarter hour but it's still slow.

Reports spiking back up

There it is.

As X continues to have problems, people are noticing.

While there was a slight downturn about 30 minutes ago, it's spiking back up well past where the first molehill of reports hit.

As of this posting, it's sitting over 5,700 reports on Down Detector.

What degraded performance looks like

I've been looking at X a lot over the last hour to see what is and isn't working.

For the most part stuff is loading but it takes a few reloads. As an example, my home feed wasn't showing at all at several points and giving the image.

Other things like the trending page aren't loading well either.

It's not clear if new posts are loading since the time appears to adjust and show wrong times.

X status page listed as "degraded"

X doesn't have a status page that comes up right away. You have to navigate to the developer platform to find it.

We did and currently the X API v2 is listed as having "degraded performance."

The incident history currently says there is a site wide outage. It does not say if X is working on the issue or if a fix is in the works.

There isn't much more information that at this time.

Reports already starting to decline

Perhaps it was a blip.

Reports on Down Detector have started to decline down to 1800 as of this writing. Though we noticed that the search feature and trending tabs aren't loading properly or take a couple of refreshes to load.

We're keeping an eye on things.

Down for everyone

We have additionally checked the site downforeveryone.com which is also showing X as having problems.

That site shows where reports are coming from and it appears global with reports from the US, Canada, Peru, and Germany among other countries listed.

Second outage of 2025

Previously, X went down in March and stayed out for about 3 hours.

Currently, people are reporting issues with both the desktop and mobile versions of X, though we've mainly seen problems in the browser version of the platform.