X outage: Elon Musk's site is down, here's what we know

X went down on Friday, Jan. 16.
 By 
Tim Marcin
 on 
x logo on screen
Credit: Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Updated on Jan. 16 at 11:21 a.m. ET: X appeared to be recovering from its earlier outage. User-reported issues eased on Downdetector. We were successfully able to load the site and browse, about an hour after it went down.


Elon Musk's X appeared to suffer a major outage on Friday.

User-reported issues for X on Downdetector spiked shortly after 10 a.m. ET. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, the same parent company as Mashable.)


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Upon trying to open the social media site, we received an error message that read: "Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot." It was not immediately clear what caused the outage.

an error message on x dot com
The error message on X. Credit: Screenshot: X

X also suffered a relatively brief outage earlier in the week. In fact, it's been quite the week for outages, with Verizon suffering a huge outage, with folks across the U.S. losing cell service for a long stretch.

Users on Bluesky, especially, reacted strongly to X being down, dunking on the site amid the ongoing issue of its AI tool, Grok, being used to create nonconsensual, sexual images. Some users have migrated away from X over time amid its rightwing shift.

X-Twitter is down Oontz oontz oontz oontz

— Ms . Penny Oaken, SkyWitch 🧙‍♀️ (@skywitches.net) January 16, 2026 at 10:47 AM

Brace position BlueSky - X is down

— Tom Jamieson (@tomjam.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 10:44 AM

X is completely down, now is BlueSky's chance to shine. So, we're replacing one letter in song titles today?

— Michael Kupperman (@mkupperman.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 10:52 AM

This story is developing and will be updated as necessary...

close-up of man's face
Tim Marcin
Associate Editor, Culture

Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).

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