Social media platform X hit by second global outage within a week

Published January 16, 2026
The logo of social media platform X is seen in this illustration taken on July 24, 2023. —Reuters/File
The logo of social media platform X is seen in this illustration taken on July 24, 2023. —Reuters/File

X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday faced a global outage, the second in a week, as users from across the world reported having difficulties accessing the platform.

According to a report by The Independent, the website and its app failed to load for users across the globe, with many visitors saying they saw a blank screen.

“Some users also saw Cloudflare error pages – though the issue was at X itself, and the problem did not seem to be a repeat of recent Cloudflare technical issues that did take X offline,” the report said.

Staffers at Dawn also saw a Cloudflare error page when they tried accessing the website, while the app did not load at all and showed posts from hours ago.

Screenshot of a Cloudflare error a staffer at Dawn saw when they tried accessing the website at 8:52pm PKT.
Screenshot of a Cloudflare error a staffer at Dawn saw when they tried accessing the website at 8:52pm PKT.

Tracking website Downdetector showed a massive uptick in reports of problems at X at 8:15pm, with 315 complaints, before they fell to 245 at 8:45pm.

Screenshot showing as spike in reports of problems at X at around 8:15pm in Pakistan.
Screenshot showing as spike in reports of problems at X at around 8:15pm in Pakistan.

According to Reuters, there were more than 41,000 reports of issues with the social media platform as of 10:35 am ET in the United States (8:35pm PKT), according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.

The actual number of affected users may differ from what is shown on Downdetector, as the reports are submitted by users.

Users in the UK reported around 8,000 incidents, and over 2,400 issues were reported in India.

X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

On Tuesday, thousands of users worldwide reported issues with accessing the X, with the outage beginning around 9am Eastern (7:38pm PKT), peaking at more than 28,300 logged issues with Elon Musk’s platform in the US before cooling to about 700 reports, according to Downdetector.

In the UK, reports fell to roughly 130 from a high of more than 8,000, while Canada saw issues decline after topping 3,200 earlier in the day, according to the website that tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.

In Pakistan, complaints peaked at 93 at 7:38pm, falling to four by 8:23pm.

In November 2025, a Cloudflare outage had briefly prevented access to X after a faulty security configuration crashed its traffic system. A few days later, a separate disruption took X offline for thousands of US users.

On March 10 last year, users in Pakistan and around the world experienced an outage on X. At the time, platform owner Elon Musk said the disruption was the result of a cyberattack.

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