SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 21, 2023 (AFP) – Tens of thousands of global users of X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday reported problems using the Elon Musk-owned social network.
Reports of the platform’s troubles began spiking just before 0600 GMT on monitoring site Downdetector.
“User reports indicate problems at X (Twitter),” the site said.
Timelines on the platform were emptied and no new posts visible, although the twitter.com site was available.
With no way to post on X, social media users published updates about the outage on rivals including Facebook, Threads, and Reddit.
The platform resumed service for users in multiple countries shortly after 0640 GMT.
At the outage’s peak, Downdetector indicated that about 67,000 US users reported problems.
The outage also affected X Pro, formerly known as TweetDeck.
There has been no immediate comment from X, nor any indication of what caused the outage.
X is currently facing multiple headwinds, including an EU probe under a law designed to combat disinformation and hate, criticism of the platform’s response to recent rioting in Dublin, and an exodus of big-name advertisers.
Musk’s company is now worth less than half of the $44 billion he paid for it in October 2022, according to internal documents sent to staff and reported by tech publication The Verge.
A major outage on X was also reported by Downdetector in February, affecting thousands of users.
User complaints shared online included being unable to post messages, being told they had exceeded a daily limit of posts, and the inability to send direct messages.