Elon Musk's X suffers global outage for second time in a week
Social media users are experiencing problems trying to access X for the second time this week.
When trying to load the homepage, web and app users are currently being met with the the 'something went wrong,' message, telling users to 'try reloading'.
At the time of writing, a number of reports are starting to emerge on the Downdetector site, where people report issues with websites and apps.
By 3.09pm UK time, more than 13,000 people had reported issues with the site — 59 percent of people experiencing issue with the app and a further 33 percent having problems with the website.
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This is the second time the social site has run into issues this week, with thousands of people taking to Downdetector report the same problem on Tuesday, 13 January.
By 2.30pm that afternoon, more than 7,000 users had reported issues across the UK and the US, all stating the same issue.
Much like earlier in the week, the website, formerly known as Twitter, seems to be working fine for some people and not for others, with no word on what could be causing the current issues.
Ironically, the social media site seems filled with posts about people reporting issues — despite being on the site to post.
This isn't the first time X has experienced an outage, with similar problems reported in November last year, just days after a huge global internet outage sparked by Cloudflare going down.
On 18 November, Cloudflare, which provides security to websites and apps all over the world, experienced technical issues which caused a huge ripple effect on websites like X, ChatGPT, Bet365, Canva, Ikea and Google Gemini, to name a few.
Shockingly, the incident was the third of its kind, coming just weeks after two major outages from Amazon's AWS, which saw blackouts across the likes of Snapchat, Roblox, HMRC, Amazon and many more, followed by Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, affecting Minecraft, Xbox and Asda Online, plus thousands of others.
Both today and Tuesday's outage come fresh after speculation Elon Musk's social media site could be banned in the UK, after Ofcom launched a formal investigation into whether it has failed to comply with UK law.
It comes after ministers called on the regulator to use its 'full legal powers', after unlawful AI images were created on the website using the Grok chatbot.
Grok had been reported numerous times for removing the clothes of people in photos without their consent. In response to the complaints, X limited the ability to edit photos to those who pay a monthly fee, but ministers say this isn't good enough.
“It is an insult and totally unacceptable for Grok to still allow this if you’re willing to pay for it," tech secretary Liz Kendall said. "I expect Ofcom to use the full legal powers parliament has given them."
Writing in the Telegraph, she added: "Sexually manipulating images of women and children is despicable and abhorrent."
In response, Musk has branded Kendall and other ministers who have spoken out as 'fascist,' and says they want to 'suppress free speech.'
Topics: Twitter, Technology, Social Media
Emma Rosemurgey