Monday morning saw widespread disruptions on Elon Musk's social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, leaving tens of thousands of users struggling to access the service. According to Downdetector, reports of outages began surfacing around 6:30 a.m. ET, with over 40,000 users in the U.S. and more than 10,800 in the U.K. reporting issues. The outages manifested in various ways, including timelines failing to refresh on mobile apps, users stuck in endless loading loops, and error messages on the web version stating, “Something went wrong. Try reloading.” Some users even encountered Cloudflare error pages indicating a Host Error when connecting to X.com.

The intermittent nature of the outages was particularly frustrating for users, with the site going down for several minutes at a time before briefly returning. While X experienced these issues, competing platforms like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon remained operational, offering alternative avenues for users seeking real-time updates and social connection.

CNBC reported that the cause of the outages was not immediately clear, and X did not respond to requests for comment. This latest disruption adds to a series of large-scale outages that X has experienced since Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion in 2022. Previous incidents include problems reported in December 2022 and with the site's desktop app in July 2023.

The timing of the outage was particularly unfortunate for NFL fans, as it coincided with the first day of the NFL's free agency tampering window. With X being a primary source for real-time news updates on player signings, fans were forced to seek alternative sources such as linear TV and competing social media platforms like Bluesky.

The outages have sparked discussions about the platform's stability under Musk's ownership, particularly in light of significant staff reductions. Since taking over, Musk has slashed the company's headcount by approximately 80%, reducing the number of full-time engineers to just 550 by January 2023.

As of 12:15 p.m. ET, both the app and website appeared to remain unstable. Jess Weatherbed, a news writer covering creative industries, computing, and internet culture, noted that the issues seemed to be impacting users globally. NetBlocks, which monitors internet outages, also reported widespread issues.