Users of X, Elon Musk-owned social network formerly known as Twitter, reported multiple problems accessing the website and app Friday evening.
Error reports for X began spiking at around 9:30 p.m. PT, according to monitoring service Downdetector. Problem reports spiked to more than 7,000 by 9:42 p.m. PT, with 66% of users saying they were having problems with the app and 29% saying they had issues with the site and 5% indicating a server-connection issue.
According to several users who posted on Downdetector, the dates on all X posts in their feeds were showing up as “Dec, 31, 1969.” One commenter said they could access X “but none of the posts are showing up, while the home just show the welcome message.” It’s unclear what the cause of the problems was. The Downdector page for X showed a concentration of problem reports from the New York metro area.
X/Twitter has had sporadic technical issues on the past, including in July 2023 when key features of the service appeared to be not working correctly. In March of last year, a Twitter Spaces live audio event with Ron DeSantis crashed, disrupting the Florida governor’s official announcement of his ill-fated bid to run for U.S. president in 2024.
Earlier this year the company retired the twitter.com domain name in a full move to x.com on the web. In the months after Musk closed the $44 billion deal for Twitter in October 2022, the company laid off about 80% of its employees. Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, in July 2023 unilaterally rebranded Twitter as X; he had earlier announced that he was going to change Twitter into X, “the everything app.”