X down – latest: Twitter and Grok not working in another major outage

Technical issues come amid widespread criticism of Elon Musk’s platform

Twitter and Grok not working in another major outage

X, formerly Twitter, has gone down in what appears to be a major outage.

The site and its app did not load at all, with visitors instead seeing 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.

Often, during outages at X, the site itself will load but it will show no posts.

Tracking website Down Detector showed a huge spike in reports of problems at X at around 3pm in the UK, or 10am eastern time.

The issues appeared to be present right across the world and on the various ways of accessing X, such as its website and mobile apps.

Key Points

• Everything you need to know about X outage
• Technical problems come amid widespread criticism of X and Musk
• Outage appears to be intermittent

[16 January 2026 16:47 · Andrew Griffin]

Cloudflare does not appear to be cause of a broader problem

On some tracking websites, such as Down Detector, Cloudflare appears to be struggling. It might be – but, if it is, then it does not appear to be affecting other sites.

The uptick in reports about Cloudflare may be because the X website is sometimes showing Cloudflare error messages. But those error messages make clear that the problem is at X.

All of which is to say: it doesn’t look like this new outage is another big Cloudflare problem. (Which have, in the past, taken down X and other big websites.)

[16 January 2026 16:45 · Andrew Griffin]

Musk and X accounts silent on outage

The official X accounts of both X itself and its owner Elon Musk are yet to post about the outage. The latter has posted – about the kind of political issues that largely dominate his feed these days – but not addressed the problem.

(Still, on his most recent post, the first reply that shows for me is someone asking “What’s up with the app?”)

[16 January 2026 16:43 · Andrew Griffin]

X appears to be coming back – slowly

It is still slow and unreliable, but X appears to be coming back slightly. Reports of problems are reducing, and anecdotally it appears to be loading. (And there are lots of new posts there when it does, so other people must be able to get online, too.)

[16 January 2026 16:05 · Andrew Griffin]

Site might work on some devices and not others

(Anecdotal, again, as below.) Right now, Twitter appears to be working for me on my phone, but not on my desktop. If you need to get online, it might be worth trying on another device or app.

[16 January 2026 15:52 · Andrew Griffin]

Outage appears to be intermittent

Occasionally, and anecdotally, the site appears to have come back a few times in the hour or so that it’s been down. But then it breaks again. The outage appears to be intermittent for now.

[16 January 2026 15:46 · Andrew Griffin]

Latest on X outage

Here’s the latest from our sister site, Bulletin, if you’d like to read about the outage in brief.

[16 January 2026 15:43 · Andrew Griffin]

Musk takeover brought fears of outages – but it has largely stayed online

When Mr Musk bought what was then Twitter, in 2022, there were widespread worries that his decision to fire the majority of the company’s staff would stop the site from working as usual. In the time since, however, X has largely stayed online though it has intermittently experienced technical issues.

[16 January 2026 15:43 · Andrew Griffin]

This week's problems follow widespread criticism of Grok chatbot

The outage follows another major technical issue at X this week. Both come amid loud criticism of the Elon Musk-owned platform, and its chatbot Grok, over the fact that it was creating violent and abusive images, often of women and children.

Grok – which is also available in a standalone form, in addition to being accessible as an account on X – also went down in the outage. While the chatbot would occasionally appear to load, it showed an array of error messages.

[16 January 2026 15:42 · Andrew Griffin]

X does not have a status platform for updates

Unlike many other platforms, X does not operate a public-facing status page to give updates on outages and other problems. It does have one for its developer platform, which claimed during the outage that “all systems are operational”.

[16 January 2026 15:42 · Andrew Griffin]

Hello and welcome...

... to our live coverage of a major outage at X, formerly Twitter, as well as on its Grok AI chatbot.