Global Communication Disrupted as X Goes Dark
Something as simple as checking your X feed or responding to a DM suddenly became impossible for millions after a fire broke out in one of X’s data centers in Hillsboro, Oregon. The issue started on May 22, 2025, when a blaze ignited inside a battery storage room at a facility managed by Digital Realty—a major player in the data infrastructure world. Despite how serious it sounded, the fire didn’t spread, and everyone on site made it out unscathed. Still, what happened inside that one room sent ripple effects around the globe.
By midday in Oregon, reports began pouring into Downdetector.com from users coast to coast—LA to New York, Vancouver to Berlin, even as far as Lima. In the span of just a few hours, almost 6,000 complaints had piled up. The main symptoms? Glacially slow loading, missing posts, app crashes, and total lockouts, both on browsers and mobile devices. Even those who could open X saw errors that made keeping up with news or sharing updates impossible.
The scale and speed of the interruption caught many off guard. This wasn’t just a bump for US users; it was a worldwide freeze on the platform. For businesses and journalists especially, relying on a steady feed of real-time information, the timing couldn’t have been worse. And because X has become the go-to outlet for everything from local emergencies to meme wars, the outage highlighted just how dependent people have become on platforms that sometimes rest on a handful of server rooms and complex tech.
Musk's X Faces Growing Pains in the Spotlight
This isn’t the first time under Elon Musk’s watch that X (the rebranded Twitter) has hit technical turbulence. Back in March 2025, users endured a multi-hour blackout, sparking a round of complaints and questions about what’s going wrong behind the scenes. Ever since Musk’s dramatic overhaul in 2022—which included massive staff lay-offs, deep changes to infrastructure, and an uncertain vision for the company’s future—X has struggled to keep its engine running smoothly during high-demand moments or technical hiccups.
Shortly after Wednesday’s fire, the X team posted a brief statement for developers: “We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.” Digital Realty confirmed that the fire had been controlled quickly and local firefighters wrapped up their work without anyone needing medical care. Meanwhile, monitoring group NetBlocks quickly ruled out government censorship or blocks, pointing straight at old-fashioned technical breakdowns—think overloaded servers or chaos inside the data center after the fire.
X’s official guidance for frustrated users wasn’t especially groundbreaking: clear your browser cache, restart your phone, and try again later. But for those hoping to reconnect, every minute without access felt painfully long. Outages like these show how even the world’s biggest tech platforms can be brought down by a single point of failure—sometimes as randomly as a piece of overheated hardware in a single room.
For now, X outage has become a talking point for both critics and loyal users, shining a light on the complex, vulnerable web that keeps our digital lives ticking along. As the world reconnects, many are asking: what’s next for Musk’s X, and how ready is it for the next unexpected shock?
