X experiences global outage

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, suffered a widespread global outage on Friday, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access the service through both its website and mobile applications.

According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, reports of problems surged sharply around 3pm BST (10am Eastern Time). 

In the United States alone, more than 62,000 users reported issues at the peak of the disruption, though the number later fluctuated as services appeared to partially stabilise. 

In the UK, around 11,000 incidents were logged, while users in India reported more than 3,000 issues.

Users said they were met with blank screens instead of their usual feeds, suggesting a more severe disruption than previous incidents, when posts would fail to load despite the platform opening.

Downdetector noted that the figures reflect user-submitted reports and may not fully capture the total number of affected accounts worldwide.

The outage appeared to affect all access points, including desktop browsers and mobile apps, with users across multiple regions reporting similar problems simultaneously. 

X had not immediately commented on the cause of the disruption.