Social media platform X experienced a significant global outage on Friday, January 16, 2026, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access the service. According to Downdetector, more than 96,000 users reported issues at the peak of the disruption, which began around 10:00 AM Eastern Time. The outage affected both web and mobile applications worldwide, marking the second major service disruption within a week.
Users attempting to access X were met with blank screens and Cloudflare error messages stating that something went wrong while trying to reach the host server. The error specifically indicated that while Cloudflare protection was active, the X origin servers remained unreachable. Approximately 56 percent of reported problems were related to the mobile app, while 33 percent affected the website and 10 percent involved server connection issues.
The timing of the outage coincided with scheduled Cloudflare maintenance at its Toronto datacenter, which was planned from 08:00 to 14:00 UTC. However, Cloudflare systems appeared to operate normally during the incident, suggesting the issue originated from X infrastructure or the connection between X and Cloudflare services. The outage also affected xAI's Grok chatbot, which relies on X's infrastructure.
This disruption follows a similar outage on January 13, which affected approximately 28,000 users. The increasing frequency of service interruptions has raised concerns about the platform's technical stability under Elon Musk's ownership. Neither X nor Cloudflare issued official statements confirming whether the outage resulted from technical failures, configuration errors, or potential security incidents.
The incident highlights the growing dependence on cloud infrastructure services and the cascading effects when connectivity between major platforms fails. Users across the United Kingdom, United States, and other regions reported widespread access problems throughout the morning hours. As of this report, the platform appears to be gradually recovering, though some users continue to experience intermittent issues.