If you had trouble using X today, you're not alone. DownDetector reports that over 5,000 people have reported issues accessing the social media platform as of 4PM ET. X's official Engineering account claims the issue is due to a data center outage.
“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today,” X's Engineering account writes. “We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.” The platform last experienced a major outage in March 2025. At the time, X CEO Elon Musk blamed the outage on a “massive cyberattack.” Security researchers who looked into the issue later said it was poor security on X's part that left the company's servers vulnerable to attack.
Update, May 22, 6:30PM ET: Users are still reporting problems accessing X, though at a lesser rate than its peak of 3:40PM ET. The X Engineering report has not posted an update since its original tweet.
Update, May 22, 9:35PM ET: X is still experiencing site-wide outage. Wired has reported that a fire broke out at a data center leased by Elon Musk in Hillsboro, Oregon. It's not quite clear if that has anything to do with the current outage.
