Elon Musk’s X Crashes for Tens of Thousands in Surprise Outage

preCharge News TECH — Elon Musk’s social media platform X suffered a widespread outage Saturday morning, with more than 25,000 users reporting disruptions in service, according to the real-time outage tracking service Downdetector.

The crash, which began shortly after 8:30 a.m. ET, left users unable to load timelines, post content, or access notifications. While services gradually resumed by 10 a.m., many users still faced intermittent connectivity issues for another hour.

This marks the second major disruption in less than a week, raising new concerns about the platform’s technical resilience under Musk’s leadership.

“Failover Redundancy Should Have Worked”—Musk Admits Infrastructure Flaws

Musk addressed the outage in a post on X, offering a blunt assessment of the platform’s reliability.

“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” Musk wrote. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

In a separate post, he added,

“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.”

Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.

I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.

As evidenced by the 𝕏 uptime issues this week, major operational…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2025

The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX signaled he’s stepping up his personal involvement in platform operations amid these recurring glitches. “I must be super focused on our companies, as we have critical technologies rolling out,” he added.

A Pattern of Failures Since Musk’s Takeover

This isn’t the first time X—formerly Twitter—has gone dark under Musk’s leadership. Since acquiring the platform in late 2022, Musk has grappled with recurring technical failures that have increasingly frustrated users and advertisers alike.

In March 2025, the platform experienced another major outage, which Musk blamed on a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote at the time.

There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against 𝕏.

We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.

Tracing … https://t.co/aZSO1a92no
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2025

While X officials have yet to confirm the root cause of this week’s dual outages, users and analysts are speculating whether internal infrastructure issues—or another wave of targeted cyberattacks—are to blame.

The company did not respond to requests for comment from preCharge News.

Operational Stress Signals Growing Pains for X’s Vision

Musk’s ambition to transform X into an “everything app”—combining social media, payments, and AI infrastructure—has placed extraordinary demands on the platform’s architecture. Critics say the frequent outages underscore a lack of scalable redundancy and underinvestment in core systems.

Industry insiders note that Musk’s decision to slash X’s engineering workforce following his takeover may be partly responsible for the current instability.

Still, Musk remains defiant. His comments suggest he’s personally re-engaging at a deeper operational level, reminiscent of his early Tesla and SpaceX days when he reportedly slept on factory floors.

But as the platform scales and competitors like Threads and Bluesky seek to attract disillusioned users, X’s technical growing pains may carry steep costs—both reputational and financial.

Can Musk Fix the Machine Without Breaking It?

As of now, X appears to be functioning normally again. But with two significant outages in five days, faith in the platform’s reliability has taken a hit.

For now, Musk is betting on his hands-on approach and technical vision to steer X through turbulence. But whether that’s enough to regain trust from users—and ward off regulatory scrutiny—remains to be seen.