Thought Leadership
On Saturday, the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) showed the first signs of stabilization after a major outage had previously prevented many users in the US from using it.
Massive outage affecting thousands of people
According to Downdetector.com, a service specializing in disruptions, the number of reported problems peaked at over 10,000 incidents. By the evening at around 19:42 (local time), however, this figure had fallen to around 1,000. The platform collects its data through reports from users who indicate technical difficulties.
Repeated failures since takeover by Musk
Since the takeover by Elon Musk in 2022, which cost around 44 billion US dollars, X has already experienced several major technical problems. Similar outages also occurred in March – at the time, it was suspected that so-called DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks were behind them. Such attacks deliberately overload servers with mass requests.
Hacktivist group takes responsibility
A group called “Dark Storm” has claimed responsibility for the current incident. The group describes itself as a digital activist unit and justified its action with political motives. A member of the group criticized Elon Musk and former US President Donald Trump via the alternative network Bluesky and announced further digital protest actions.
Elon Musk himself has commented on the platform’s technical weaknesses in the past. He conceded that significant operational improvements are needed at X to ensure the long-term stability of the network.
