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ISLAMABAD: Access to the social media platform X was gradually restored in Pakistan on Saturday after a global outage, which affected services in several countries.
Downdetector, which monitors internet outages in real time, showed a spike in users’ complaints after 5pm. The tally peaked with 372 complaints at 5:36pm, with more than 600 complaints in total reported by late evening.
Users said they were unable to log in to their accounts and send tweets.
However, the number of complaints reduced by 8pm, indicating the restoration of services.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) noted that social media platform X was facing a mass global outage, including in Pakistan, but stated that the country’s internet services “remain fully functional”.
“PTA’s investigation into the matter has confirmed that there are no technical issues at Pakistan’s internet gateways.”
“All other internet services across the country remain fully functional,” PTA said.
X was blocked in Pakistan on Feb 17, 2024, after allegations of widespread rigging during the general elections by a former bureaucrat. However, the platform was discreetly restored on May 7 after India fired missiles into Pakistan, resulting in a days-long conflict.
Prolonged disruption
The global internet observer NetBlocks has also confirmed the disruptions were global but not related to any country-level internet filtering.
Earlier today, X said that it was working to resolve issues with various services that continued for a second day.
“We’re still experiencing issues from yesterday’s data centre outage. Login and signup services are unavailable for some users, and there may be delays in notifications and Premium features,” the engineering department of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s platform said on X.
The disruption came two days after a previous global outage, which affected the services of X for several hours on Thursday.
A fire broke out on Thursday morning at the data centre leased by X, forcing an extended response from emergency crews, Wired reported, citing multiple sources.
The sources required anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly about the company, it added.
According to the report, firefighters arrived at the Hillsboro Technology Park and found a “room with batteries that were deemed to be involved in the fire”.
Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich told Wired that the fire had “not spread to other parts of the building, but said the room in question was heavy with smoke”.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Wired. “It could not be learned whether server operations at the data centre had been affected by the incident,” the outlet noted.
Kalbe Ali also contributed to this report
Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2025
