On Tuesday, thousands of users experienced significant issues with the social media platform X, which were reported shortly after 11:30 GMT. Millions more users rushed to outage monitoring platform Downdetector to report and confirm their issues. That sudden increase in traffic helped show how pervasive the issue was. According to Downdetector, which monitors outages across numerous services, X was just one of many platforms reporting problems.
Downdetector delivers vital real-time information about major service outages across the United States. Its AI-powered watchdog tracks problems on top social media, video and music platforms 24/7, alerting users immediately. Over one-fifth of all websites worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies, depend on what Downdetector provides. This underscores the platform’s important role in identifying and addressing unexpected service breaks.
Then technology reporter Liv McMahon went in-depth on the emerging crisis related to X and other impacted services. According to her reports, the problems became apparent shortly after 11:30 GMT on Tuesday, prompting a surge of user complaints. Business Insider noted that thousands of X users posted about being unable to access the app, which was verified by Downdetector using its real-time tracking technology.
Cloudflare, the popular content delivery network and law enforcement infrastructure provider, recognized the implications. The company stated, “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers.” This unexpected admission from Cloudflare further fueled the fire among users looking for news and updates on the outage.
As Downdetector continued to monitor the situation, it noted that users may “continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts,” according to Cloudflare’s statement. Restoration efforts are underway in earnest. As users will soon continue to find out the hard way—without trying to use X and other affected services—they could still face significant challenges with accessibility.