After DownDetector recorded tens of thousands of users worldwide facing repeated outages on X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk confirmed that the disruptions were the result of an ongoing cyberattack on the platform.
“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk stated on X. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”
Beyond Musk’s statement, details remain scarce, but speculation spread that X was experiencing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
X’s official support channel, which has been inactive since August, has not yet addressed the outage. However, when one user asked Grok—X’s AI-powered chatbot that summarizes news—about the situation, the chatbot reinforced suspicions about a DDoS attack while also mentioning alternative possibilities.
“Over 40,000 users reported issues, with the platform struggling to load globally,” Grok stated. “No clear motive yet, but some speculate it’s political since X is the only target. Outages hit hard in the US, Switzerland, and beyond.”
As X Falters, Users Long for Twitter
It has been nearly two years since Elon Musk declared that Twitter “no longer exists,” swiftly pushing to rebrand the social media giant as X despite warnings from critics that users wouldn’t easily detach from the Twitter identity.
Now, the current outage served as a reminder that, for a significant portion of its audience, Musk’s attempt to erase Twitter has not fully succeeded.
As the platform faced technical difficulties, hashtags like #MyX and “My Twitter” began trending. However, engagement levels suggested that the majority of users still instinctively referred to the service as Twitter. While approximately 360,000 posts mentioned “my X,” over a million users flooded the platform with mentions of “My Twitter.”
“Has anyone noticed that people are saying ‘My Twitter’ instead of ‘My X’?” X user @VulFuru47 wrote, humorously adding, “Did we just go through a great reset?”
Musk first initiated the Twitter rebrand in April 2023, officially confirming in a court filing that Twitter had merged with X Corp. and would no longer retain its original name. However, the transition was anything but seamless, as the Twitter name remained deeply ingrained across various platform elements alongside X branding. For instance, it took more than a year just to redirect twitter.com URLs to x.com.
Since then, industry analysts have described the rebrand as a misstep, arguing that it immediately weakened brand loyalty. Discussions on platforms like Reddit and personal blogs have repeatedly debated whether users would ever fully embrace the name, X, prompting Musk last year to demand that people respect the new branding. Meanwhile, multiple waves of users have reportedly left the platform since Musk’s acquisition, with the most recent exodus occurring after the US presidential election in November, when “droves” of users migrated to the ad-free X competitor Bluesky, as reported by Forbes.
For the thousands who remained on X or joined after its rebranding, the platform was completely inaccessible on Monday. Historically, X’s Support channel has provided updates on major system-wide outages, so further information may be shared there once the issues are resolved.
