X platform faces global outage: Users report login failures; company offers no update
Social media platform X experienced a major outage on January 13, leaving users worldwide unable to log in or refresh timelines. Complaints surged from 500 to over 20,000 within hours. The company has not explained the cause. The disruption follows Elon Musk’s announcement to open-source X’s recommendation and advertising algorithms, raising questions about possible technical changes.
Widespread disruption
On Tuesday, January 13, reports of X being down started early in the morning. Users in many countries said they could not log in. Timelines were frozen, and posts did not refresh. According to DownDetector, complaints were small at first, with about 500 users affected. By mid-morning, the number rose to over 20,000, showing a major outage rather than a small technical problem. Many users took to other platforms to check if X was down worldwide.
No official response from X
X has not yet released an official statement about the outage. Elon Musk and the company’s engineering team have not said if the problem was caused by system updates, network issues, or high traffic. The lack of information has caused speculation. Analysts are watching closely because the outage came soon after Musk’s recent announcement about algorithm transparency.
Musk’s announcement
Over the weekend, Musk said X would open-source the code for its recommendation and advertising algorithms. He said the new code would be released in seven days. Updates would follow every four weeks with detailed developer notes. He added that the goal is to make it clear how content is shown to users. Some analysts say this announcement may have led to technical changes that affected the platform.
Past outages
This is not the first time X has faced outages. In November 2025, the platform had a long blackout affecting millions of users. That outage was linked to Cloudflare, a cloud services provider, but the exact cause was unclear. It is not known if Tuesday’s outage is related to a third-party service or X’s own systems. Later in the day, some users reported that the platform started working again, but problems continued for many.