Elon Musk’s X suffers major outage with tens of thousands locked out

Tens of thousands of users were thrown off X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, after a large-scale outage hit early Saturday morning.

Around 8:30 a.m. ET, users began reporting they couldn’t log in, view posts, or refresh feeds. Within fifteen minutes, over 25,000 complaints had piled up on Downdetector, a site that tracks user-submitted reports on technical issues.

The blackout hit hard, and with no warning, it left a wide chunk of the platform’s base locked out. By mid-morning, X had yet to say a word. No updates. No system messages. 

Users flooded other platforms to complain, some suggesting it was another cyberattack like the one that shut the platform down back in March. During that incident, Elon posted, “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources.”

Elon juggles outages, political power, and backlash at Tesla

Elon bought X in 2022, back when it was still called Twitter. Since then, the site’s had multiple blackouts, and every one of them adds fuel to the criticism about how it’s being run. This latest breakdown landed while Elon was busy with more than just tech.

From May 17 to May 23, the billionaire was also handling his job as a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, focusing on something called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

On May 23, he posted on X about DOGE’s role in managing government spending, writing that “accelerating GDP growth” was now key to avoiding financial collapse. He also said the federal government wastes $100 million a year on unused phone lines and claimed DOGE is working to fix that.

But Elon’s government ties aren’t sitting right with most people. Critics have raised concerns that his Grok AI, which is being adopted in government systems, creates a conflict of interest. If Elon’s advising the White House and also signing contracts to sell AI tools to federal agencies, it’s fair to ask where the line is.

Elon is also trying to hold together Tesla, where things haven’t been smooth. Sales have dropped, and many blame the brand’s strong association with Trump for turning off potential buyers.

Still, Elon went to the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha on May 20, where he told Bloomberg he was staying on as Tesla CEO for another five years. He claimed he’s focused on autonomous driving and developing the Optimus humanoid robot, which Tesla has been hyping for years.

But while Elon talks robots, Tesla’s board is now working on a new compensation deal. A Delaware judge blocked his earlier $56 billion package, and the board is trying to figure out a new one.

Outside of politics and cars, SpaceX is still flying–literally. On Friday night, Elon posted a congratulatory message to his team after they pulled off their 450th successful Falcon rocket landing. It’s a major number in the race to make space travel cheaper and reusable.

Elon’s also been using his platform to hammer legacy media. Over the past week, he called them untrustworthy and pushed solar energy as the answer to everything. He claimed that solar is “very obviously the future,” backing that up with what he called “elementary math.” But even with solar panels and rockets in play, the controversies keep stacking up.

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