David Bridges
If you encountered difficulties while accessing X today, you’re certainly not alone in your experience. According to DownDetector, over 5,000 users reported problems with the social media platform as of 4 PM ET. The official X Engineering account has communicated that the root of the issue stems from a significant data center outage.
In a statement, the X Engineering account acknowledged, “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.” This incident follows a major outage that occurred in March 2025, where X CEO Elon Musk attributed the disruption to a “massive cyberattack.” Subsequent investigations by security researchers revealed that inadequate security measures on X’s part had left its servers susceptible to such attacks.
Update, May 22, 6:30 PM ET: Users continue to report challenges accessing X, although the volume of complaints has decreased compared to its peak at 3:40 PM ET. The X Engineering account has not provided any updates since their initial tweet regarding the outage.
Update, May 22, 9:35 PM ET: The site-wide outage on X persists. Reports from Wired indicate that a fire incident occurred at a data center leased by Elon Musk in Hillsboro, Oregon. However, it remains unclear whether this event is linked to the current outage.
Daniel Mercer
