Tens of thousands of Australian users found themselves unable to access Elon Musk's social media platform X on Friday, caught in a widespread global outage that also hit the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
Widespread Disruption Across the Platform
The technical failure began impacting users during the day, with many reporting they could not view their timelines or load new content. The problems occurred on both the X website and its mobile application. Users were intermittently shown an error message that read: “Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.”
According to data from the outage tracking service Downdetector, more than 6,000 users in Australia logged issues related to the platform's failure. The scale of the problem was significantly larger overseas, with nearly 78,000 reports in the United States, around 18,000 in the United Kingdom, and more than 8,000 in Canada. For many, their feeds flickered erratically, alternating between loading content and failing completely.
A Tumultuous Week for X and Grok AI
The cause of the hours-long outage was not immediately disclosed by X, and the company has yet to provide a formal, detailed explanation for the service failure. The platform eventually returned to normal operation after several hours of intermittent disruptions.
This incident marks the second technical hiccup for the platform in a single week, occurring against a backdrop of broader tech failures. These include a major Verizon outage in the United States that left customers without mobile service. The outage also comes at the end of a challenging period for Musk, whose controversial AI chatbot, Grok, has faced intense scrutiny.
More than 2,000 users reported errors with the Grok AI tool during the same period. The platform has been under fire after Grok was found to be producing sexualised AI imagery, prompting widespread concern. The UK government is supporting an investigation into the deepfake imagery feature to assess potential breaches of local law. In response to the backlash, Musk has stated that Grok would comply with Australian regulations.
Service Restored, Questions Remain
While both the X app and website are now reportedly functioning normally again, the exact technical root cause of the global outage remains unknown. The company has not issued an official comment on Friday's widespread service disruption, leaving users and analysts speculating about the origins of the fault.
This event highlights the growing dependence on major social media platforms and the widespread impact when they fail, disrupting communication and information flow for millions of users across the globe in an instant.
