X (Twitter) outage blamed on data centre failure, thousands affected worldwide

Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced a significant service disruption late on 23 May. Users across several countries, including India, reported widespread difficulty accessing the site and app.

The outage was officially confirmed by X’s engineering team through a platform post. The message read:
“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.”

The confirmation came nearly eight hours after users first began reporting issues. No further update has been shared by the company since then.

X (Twitter) Outage: Disruption timeline and scope

The issue began to surface around 11:30 pm IST on 22 May, intensifying steadily and peaking by 1:16 am IST on 23 May. According to tracking service Downdetector, nearly 6,000 global users flagged problems. Of these, 57% faced app-related difficulties, while 38% struggled with the website. Another 5% cited server connection errors.

In the United States, complaints started rising at 2:30 pm EDT. Reports briefly dropped but surged again to over 5,800 by 3:30 pm EDT. By 4:20 pm, that number had fallen to around 630. Meanwhile, X’s developer platform status page stated, “some systems are experiencing degraded performance.”

Indian users experience milder impact

Although the outage was global, the impact in India was relatively contained. At its peak, Downdetector India logged 266 user complaints. This number later dropped to around 100 by Friday morning, indicating some recovery.

Despite the lighter impact, Indian users took to the platform—when accessible—to share their reactions. Many were frustrated. Some responded with humour or sarcasm.

One post read, “Twitter is still broken. Xbox down. WWE Slam trade dealers require an organ for specific wrestlers. Tonight is cooked.”

Another user wrote: “OMG??? Where do we even go when twitter is down? Everybody is coming to twitter always It works on browser but this is stupid like they should pay me and I will fix it.”

A third said: “Twitter is breaking down extra hard now and DM's are totally gone, but hey at least we don't have DEI hires anymore!”

A fourth added: “no clue how long twitter DMs R gonna be down or if you can even see what i wrote to you but my disc is ‘lifeiseasyyy.’ so we can talk on a site that actually works xd.”

A troubled year for X’s infrastructure

This latest incident adds to a growing list of technical failures for the platform in recent months. On 10 March 2025, X suffered a major outage which Elon Musk described as “a massive cyberattack” allegedly involving “either a large, coordinated group and/or a country.” No evidence was provided to support the claim.

That March outage affected more than 41,000 users and lasted approximately 30 minutes. A second outage struck on 28 March, impacting over 56,000 accounts globally. Prior to that, the platform was inaccessible for over an hour in September 2024.

Despite the frequency of these incidents, the company has not introduced a public-facing status dashboard. The only available updates continue to come from its developer platform or sporadic social media posts.

Frustrations have grown over the platform’s lack of timely communication. After the initial acknowledgment, no further information has been released by X, leaving users in the dark about when full service will resume.

As of now, many users have regained access, especially in India. But reports from countries like the US, Canada, Peru and Germany suggest the outage has not been fully resolved for everyone.

This episode once again raises broader questions about the platform’s resilience and its response mechanisms in the face of growing technical failures. Whether Musk’s team can restore both the platform and user trust remains to be seen.

(With inputs from TOI)