Late Thursday night, users of the social media platform X experienced widespread outages. Timelines became completely non-functional with them not updating, and then notifications eventually ceased working completely. Further updates were missing for nearly 15 hours. We received reports from a number of users beginning around 6 p.m. Eastern, May 8. The issue impacted all users around the world, causing an enormous amount of frustration for those missing alerts and opportunities to engage.
The recent incident is representative of an underlying and chronic lack of connectivity on X. Like in March 2023, when these widespread outages disconnected users on TRB completely from the platform. In this most recent disruption, it was users that suddenly were unable to access feeds, send messages or interact with content. In December 2022 and again in July 2023, X was plagued by widespread cascade fail connectivity issues, as user trust in the platform’s reliability is severely tested.
X’s Staff Reduction and Impact on Reliability
As recently as January 2023, X had over 550 full-time engineers on staff. Another round of layoffs in November 2024 slammed the engineering department over the workforce. This blow only compounded the already extreme challenges facing the airline in addressing technical issues. Elon Musk bought X (then called Twitter) for $44 billion in 2022. Just one month after the acquisition, the company cut the workforce by approximately 80%, reducing its employee base from 7,500 workers to just 1,300. This reduction has led to concerns regarding the platform’s ability to address persistent technical issues.
For the most recent notification bug, thousands of dissatisfied users flocked to Reddit to share their concerns. One user from Germany noted, “No notifications since about 10 p.m. last night here in Germany!” Another user shared their experience, stating, “I thought that uninstalling and reinstalling the app would work (it didn’t).”
At the time, Elon Musk was quick to blame the disruption on a cyberattack but did not offer up any proof that this was the case. Just like that, notifications on X started working a little over an hour after we first reported this problem.
Author’s Opinion
X’s persistent connectivity issues and frequent outages highlight deep structural problems that need urgent attention. While technical setbacks are common for large platforms, the continuous disruption of services—exacerbated by the company’s massive layoffs—raises serious concerns about the platform’s future reliability and user trust. Elon Musk’s response to the latest outage, without providing evidence of a cyberattack, only compounds the frustration and skepticism surrounding the platform’s ability to deliver stable service.
