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X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, suffered major outages in the early hours of Thursday morning that left users unable to access the site.
Users in countries across the globe found themselves unable to view their timelines for more than an hour starting around 1 a.m. Eastern, according to data from DownDetector.
X users were instead met with a placeholder message that read: “Welcome to X! This is the best place to see what’s happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now.”
Users were, however, able to make posts during the hour-long outage, despite being unable to view them.
The reasons for the outages remain unclear. X did not immediately respond to MarketWatch for comment.
After services were restored, users flocked back to the platform to complain. Users also hit out at X owner Elon Musk, who bought the microblogging platform for $44 billion last year. Fidelity, which holds a small stake in one of its funds, has cut its valuation by two-thirds.
The platform has experienced an uptick in outages under Musk’s ownership, according to data from web monitoring service NetBlocks.
Critics of Musk have blamed the job cuts made under his leadership for the repeated outages. The billionaire slashed 80% of X’s staff after taking control of the platform in April 2022.
The cuts saw Musk slash X’s workforce from heights of 8,000 at its peak to totals of just 2,000 employees.
The outages come as Musk is facing mounting pressure from advertisers, who have started boycotting X over the billionaire’s own activities on the social media platform.
Musk faced accusations of antisemitism after appearing to endorse a post that claimed Jews push “dialectical hatred against whites.”
The Tesla CEO later slammed advertisers for distancing themselves from X, telling them to “go f*** yourself,” at a conference hosted by the New York Times.
“I don’t want them to advertise,” Musk said at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York.
