X (Twitter) Down Again Amid Ongoing Cloudflare Outage/ Newslooks/ WASHINGTON/ J. Mansour/ Morning Edition/ The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered a widespread outage Friday morning, with over 77,000 user reports citing issues accessing the app. The disruption has been linked to Cloudflare, a core internet infrastructure provider experiencing technical failures. Verizon also recently faced a separate nationwide service outage, affecting millions.
X and Cloudflare Outage Quick Looks
- Over 77,000 U.S. X users reported issues Friday morning
- X (Twitter) failed to load for mobile and desktop users
- Cloudflare reported widespread 500 server errors during the outage
- This is the second X outage reported this week
- Tuesday’s X outage affected 24,000+ users
- Verizon experienced a major wireless outage on Jan. 14
- More than 1.5 million Verizon customers were impacted
- Verizon promised $20 credits to affected customers
- No cyberattack suspected; software glitch cited as cause
Deep Look: X (Twitter) Down Again Amid Ongoing Cloudflare Outage
Millions of users across the U.S. experienced difficulty accessing social media platform X—formerly known as Twitter—on the morning of Friday, January 16, 2026, marking the platform’s second major disruption in less than a week.
According to Downdetector.com, which tracks real-time internet service outages, reports of issues peaked around 10:15 a.m. EST with over 77,000 incidents submitted by X users. Affected users described problems ranging from blank screens to non-loading timelines on both mobile apps and desktop browsers.
By 10:45 a.m. ET, the number of reported issues had dropped to about 63,000, but service remained inconsistent for many.
Second X Outage This Week
This marks the second major outage for the Elon Musk-owned platform this week. On Tuesday, January 13, more than 24,000 users encountered a similar issue where the app became unresponsive for a portion of the day.
The ongoing problems come as frustration mounts among users and questions swirl about the platform’s infrastructure under Musk’s leadership.
Cloudflare Identified as Root Cause
The primary cause of Friday’s disruption appears to be a malfunction within Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure company that supports many of the technologies driving modern websites and applications.
Cloudflare customers, including X, were hit with what are known as “500 errors”—a generic server error message indicating that a site cannot process user requests due to internal failures.
According to The Independent, Cloudflare acknowledged experiencing widespread server issues across its global network. These kinds of outages ripple across multiple services simultaneously, due to Cloudflare’s central role in managing content delivery and site performance.
The company has not yet confirmed the exact nature of the glitch or offered a full timeline for resolution.
No Connection to Verizon Outage
The X outage follows closely on the heels of a significant wireless network failure at Verizon. On Wednesday, January 14, Verizon customers across the United States began experiencing widespread service disruptions, with more than 170,000 outage reports logged by mid-afternoon.
Phones switched to “SOS” mode, indicating loss of cellular connection, as the outage persisted for nearly seven hours. The nation’s largest wireless carrier confirmed the issue had been resolved later that evening.
Verizon said in a statement that the disruption was not the result of a cyberattack. Instead, a software malfunction is being investigated as the likely cause.
To make amends, the company announced it would offer affected customers a $20 credit, which can be redeemed via the myVerizon mobile app.
“We let many of our customers down,” Verizon said in a public statement posted to X. “We’re taking full accountability and offering a credit for the inconvenience.”
Is More Trouble Ahead?
While Verizon’s outage appears to be unrelated to the X and Cloudflare issues, the string of high-profile service interruptions across major digital and telecommunications platforms is sparking wider concerns about infrastructure resilience.
Elon Musk, who has aggressively overhauled X since acquiring it, has not publicly addressed the latest outage. His approach to operations has included deep staffing cuts and major changes to internal systems, which critics argue have left the platform vulnerable to instability.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has not issued any alerts indicating these disruptions are part of a coordinated cyberattack. All available information points to isolated internal technical failures—though questions remain about the speed and reliability of responses from large tech platforms and providers.
For now, most users are gradually regaining access to X, though some may still experience limited functionality as systems stabilize. Cloudflare has said they are actively working to resolve the issue and restore full service to their affected clients.
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