PARIS: Service was fully restored to the social network X on Monday afternoon following a widespread technical disruption that left users across multiple continents staring at blank feeds and unable to view new posts.

The outage, which str­u­ck the platform owned by Elon Musk, rendered the site largely inaccessible for approximately two hours before timelines began populating and functionality returned to normal.

The platform appeared to be operating as usual by 3:30pm GMT. The restoration came shortly after Down Detector, a website that tracks online service interruptions, recorded a sharp spike in user reports regarding the site’s performance earlier in the afternoon.

Downdector indicated that in Pakistan, the number of users reporting issues peaked at 6:54pm with a total of 275 complaints, subsequently decreasing to 8 by 7:54pm.

During the disruption, internet connectivity monitor Netblocks posted on the open-source social network Mastodon that X appeared to be suffering “international outages”.

Netblocks, which tracks technical issues on major platforms as well as government-imposed internet shutoffs, clarified that Monday’s breakdown was “not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering”.

Access issues were verified globally, with journalists in countries including France and Thailand reporting an inability to access the platform.

Representatives for X did not immediately resp­ond to requests for comment regarding the cause of the outage.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2026