Mumbai, January 13: Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) experienced a widespread service disruption on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, leaving tens of thousands of users globally unable to access their timelines, post updates, or log into their accounts. The outage, which began early in the morning Eastern Time, affected users across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India, with reports peaking at over 28,000 complaints on monitoring services.

According to the outage-tracking website Downdetector, the first reports of technical difficulties surfaced around 9:00 AM ET. Users primarily cited issues with the platform's mobile app and website, noting that feeds would not refresh and were replaced with an error message stating, "Something went wrong. Try reloading", and "Posts aren’t loading right now". Elon Musk Sharply Criticises Apple-Google AI Deal, Calls It ‘Unreasonable Concentration of Power’ of Tech Giants.

User Reports Indicate Problems With X (Twitter), Says Downdetector

X (Twitter) Is Down, Says User

Users Report Receiving 'Posts Aren't Loading Right Now' Message

Is X Down, Asks User

The disruption appeared to affect several core functionalities:

Timeline Loading: Users reported blank feeds or a failure to load new posts.

Posting Failures: Attempts to send "posts" or replies resulted in "failed to send" notifications.

Login Issues: Approximately 26 per cent of reported problems were related to users being unable to access their accounts via the web.

Technical Status and Restoration

While the cause of the outage was not immediately confirmed by X, some monitoring services noted that the platform began showing signs of recovery by midday. In the United Kingdom and parts of the United States, users reported that services were gradually returning to normal by approximately 11:30 AM ET. Notably, infrastructure providers like Cloudflare and AWS, which have been linked to previous social media outages, did not report any concurrent internal failures, suggesting the issue may have been internal to X's own server architecture or API systems.

Algorithmic Changes and Transparency

The outage occurred just days after X's owner, Elon Musk, announced a significant "transparency push" to open-source the platform’s recommendation and advertising algorithms. Musk stated that the code would be made public to explain how posts are prioritised in users' feeds.

Industry analysts have speculated whether the technical failure was related to backend updates or code migrations associated with this rollout, though the company has not issued a formal statement verifying this link. Elon Musk’s Grok AI Chatbot Embraced by Pentagon Amid Global Outcry of Deepfakes and Safety Concerns.

Recent Moderation Pressures on X

The technical glitch follows a period of intense regulatory scrutiny for the platform. Earlier this week, X representatives reportedly met with government officials in various regions to address lapses in content moderation, specifically regarding obscene imagery generated by its in-built AI, Grok. While there is no evidence suggesting the outage was a deliberate result of these discussions or a cyberattack, the platform has faced increased pressure to bolster its technical stability and safety standards.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 13, 2026 08:53 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).