Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, went down for a short period on Thursday morning, leaving many users unable to access their feeds or profiles.
Instead of displaying timelines, the platform showed an error message: “Something went wrong. Try reloading.”
Reports spiked at 11:03 a.m. ET, when uptime-monitoring service Downdetector registered about 18,600 complaints. By 11:21 a.m., the situation had stabilized, and reports had fallen to fewer than 600, suggesting that the issue was mostly resolved in under half an hour.
Interestingly, X’s official Developer Platform status page made no mention of the disruption, showing no incidents logged for August 14.
Not the First Outage of the Year
While the disruption was brief, it marks the fourth major outage X has faced in 2025, highlighting a troubling trend.
- March 10: Users experienced rolling outages that Musk attributed to what he described as a “massive cyberattack.”
- Late March: A separate glitch temporarily restricted access to profiles and feeds, though it was quickly fixed.
- May 30: Perhaps the most serious failure so far. Many users saw their feeds vanish completely and were blocked from posting. Instead, their homepage displayed a message that looked like a welcome screen for new members: “Welcome to X! This is the best place to see what’s happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now.”
The May incident, in particular, fueled concerns about whether the platform’s infrastructure is stable enough to handle its global user base.
Musk’s Overhaul of Twitter Into X
Since Musk’s takeover in October 2022, X has gone through sweeping changes. After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk took it private and cut nearly 80% of staff. The layoffs reshaped critical areas such as engineering, safety operations, and content moderation.
In March 2025, Musk revealed that xAI, his artificial intelligence startup, had officially acquired X in an all-stock deal. The transaction valued X at $33 billion—a figure derived from $45 billion in equity minus $12 billion in debt. The move also boosted xAI’s valuation to $80 billion, further embedding the platform within Musk’s AI-driven vision.
For Musk, integrating X into xAI was part of a strategy to position the platform as not just a social media network but also a testing ground for new AI technologies.
Leadership Shake-Up Adds to Uncertainty
Beyond technical issues, X has also been dealing with significant leadership changes.
In July 2025, Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal advertising executive hired in 2023 as CEO, resigned from her role at X. Her appointment had been seen as an attempt to repair advertiser relationships strained under Musk’s management style and platform overhauls.
Yaccarino has since transitioned to the healthcare industry, taking the helm at eMed Population Health, a digital health company focused on GLP-1 and GIP treatments for population health management.
Her departure leaves X without a permanent chief executive during a period marked by frequent service disruptions and growing doubts about the platform’s future stability.
Eroding Trust Among Users and Advertisers
Each outage, no matter how short, chips away at user trust. For a platform that has positioned itself as a hub for global conversation, uninterrupted access is critical. Frequent disruptions not only frustrate everyday users but also make advertisers wary of relying on the service to reach audiences consistently.
The pattern of outages has also raised broader questions about Musk’s restructuring efforts. With a dramatically reduced workforce, concerns remain about whether X has enough technical support to safeguard its infrastructure and keep services running smoothly.
Musk’s vision ties X closely to xAI’s broader goals, where the platform is not just a space for communication but also a launchpad for artificial intelligence experiments.
However, that ambitious strategy depends on one essential factor: reliability. Persistent glitches, even when resolved quickly, undermine confidence among investors, users, and advertisers. To realize its potential as part of Musk’s larger AI ecosystem, X will need to demonstrate that it can deliver consistent and stable service.
