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Where do people go when X is down?
It seems that X fans don’t flock to Threads when their chosen social network is down, but Bluesky instead.
At least that’s the conclusion from a quick check on Google Trends (above) that the guys at Search Atlas pointed me towards.
While Bluesky has seen a spike in search interest today, Threads has stayed pretty flat. On paper, Threads is closer to X in style (more mainstream and centralized), but Bluesky may be closer the original Twitter in spirit.
Either way, both have likely benefited from today’s X issues, which are continuing to rumble on despite the promising drop in reports earlier…
X isn’t the only site affected
While X has been the biggest hit by today’s issues – most likely stemming from Cloudflare’s acknowledged problems – it isn’t the only place you’ll have been seeing ‘internal server error’ messages.
On Downdetector, we’ve also seen spikes at the online multiplayer game League of Legends, a fanfiction site called Archive of our Own, plus Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail according to Reddit.
The timing suggests a connection to Cloudflare’s issues – the internet infrastructure giant said at 7.37am ET / 12.37pm GMT that it was “continuing to investigate this issue”, so expected to see other services you use (alongside X) playing up today.
X still has the jitters
Despite the drop in reports on Downdetector, I’m still experiencing issues on X on both desktop and mobile – perhaps it’s spontaneously combusted from Google Gemini 3 hype.
Fortunately, that’s not the case for everyone, and the reports on Downdetector are now down to around 2,400 in the US and just over 2,000 in the UK, suggesting the issues are easing.
This corresponds to a similar drop on Cloudflare – so while there’s been no official connection between the two, it looks likely that Cloudflare issues have sparked the absence of memes and outrage on X today.
Promising signs
Good news, it seems the problems on X could be improving – the website and app are now working for me and there’s been a sharp drop in reports on Downdetector (above) to almost half of their earlier peak.
X has been dropping in and out for me today, so it’s a bit early to call this outage over – but it seems to be moving in the right direction.
Strangely, the Cloudflare problems seem to be moving in the opposite direction though, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this one…
It’s hitting both mobile and desktop
I’m feeling distinctly less distracted today than usual – and that’s because the X outage is hitting both the web version and mobile app.
Like many, I’m getting the “posts aren’t loading right now” message above when trying to refresh the mobile app.
The issues have lasted for around an hour now, but there’s promising signs on Downdetector that they may be easing…
Is Cloudflare to blame?
One of the potential culprits for today’s issues on X is Cloudflare – it’s seen a simultaneous spike on Downdetector, with over 7,000 reports in the UK and over 4,000 in the US.
Ironically, even Downdetector itself (which uses Cloudflare) was experiencing issues for a short period.
Cloudflare has also posted the notice above saying that it’s “continuing to investigate” an issue impacting multiple customers. In fact, it seems to be growing, with Cloudflare reporting “widespread 500 errors” with “Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing”.
Let’s hope this one isn’t too widespread…
X seems to be down for everyone
X is definitely having a major outage today, with tens of thousands reporting the issue on Downdetector.
At the time of writing, there are 11,150 reports in the US and 3,895 in the UK on Downdetector. The issues are affecting both the mobile app and web browser version, with both showing a “posts aren’t loading right now” message for me.
The culprit could well be Cloudflare, which says its global network is “experiencing issues”…
