On Monday, February 16, 2026, millions of users around the world awoke to a frustrating and all-too-familiar sight: X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was down again. The outage, which began shortly after 8 a.m. Eastern Time, quickly snowballed into one of the most significant disruptions the platform has seen in recent months, affecting both its mobile app and desktop website. For many, instead of the usual stream of trending topics and viral memes, the only thing on display was the stark "X" logo and a blunt error message: "Something went wrong, but don’t fret — it’s not your fault." Others saw, "Something went wrong. Try reloading."
According to Downdetector, the internet monitoring service that tracks user-reported outages, reports of trouble with X surged from just 15 at 8:15 a.m. to over 40,000 by 8:45 a.m. (as reported by Forbes). By 8:34 a.m., nearly 43,000 error reports had been logged, with 53% of users indicating problems with the app, 21% citing timeline issues, and the rest struggling to even access the website at all (Variety, USA TODAY, Asbury Park Press). These figures were echoed across multiple news outlets, with USA TODAY noting that the outage impacted users in major U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Dallas-Fort Worth, as well as in the United Kingdom and India.
For many, the outage was more than an inconvenience; it was a disruption to daily routines and, for some, even business. X, after all, boasts up to 650 million monthly users and more than 132 million daily active users globally (Asbury Park Press). The platform has become a crucial tool for communication, news dissemination, and even emergency updates—so when it goes dark, people notice.
The frustration was compounded by the lack of official communication from X itself. Unlike some of its tech peers, X does not maintain a public-facing status page for real-time updates. Typically, the company and its owner, Elon Musk, would post updates directly on X, but with the platform down, those channels were also inaccessible (The Independent). The X Developer Platform’s incident history log remained unchanged, stating that "all systems are operational" even as tens of thousands of users struggled to log in (Forbes).
By about 9:30 a.m. EST, the worst seemed to be over. Reports of issues had fallen to around 8,000, and for many users, service was restored and tweets began loading once more (Forbes, USA TODAY). Still, the cause of the outage remained a mystery. As of late Monday morning, X had not provided any explanation or timeline for what went wrong or how it was fixed (Asbury Park Press, USA TODAY).
This outage marks the third major disruption for X in 2026 alone, with two previous incidents occurring in January. On January 16, over 74,000 users reported issues, and just days earlier, more than 24,000 users were affected by another outage (USA TODAY). In the most recent January event, a widespread Verizon service outage lasted nearly 10 hours, impacting more than 1.5 million customers and causing ripple effects across various online platforms, including X. Users reported seeing "SOS Only" on their phones and were unable to make calls or send texts—a reminder of just how interconnected modern digital infrastructure can be.
The problems in early 2026 follow a string of outages in late 2025, many of which were linked to issues with Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure provider. In November and December 2025, Cloudflare suffered two separate incidents that disrupted a host of major websites, including X, LinkedIn, Fortnite, and DoorDash (USA TODAY, Asbury Park Press). According to Cloudflare, these were not cyberattacks but rather the result of intentional system changes that inadvertently caused widespread disruptions. "We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors," Cloudflare stated at the time (Asbury Park Press).
Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022 and rebranded it as X, has faced ongoing criticism over the platform’s technical stability since taking the helm. In March 2025, Musk blamed a series of rolling outages on "a massive cyberattack" against the platform, with IP addresses allegedly originating from Ukraine (Forbes). However, not all recent disruptions have been attributed to malicious actors. The complex web of dependencies between social media sites and third-party infrastructure providers like Cloudflare and Verizon means that even a minor hiccup elsewhere can send shockwaves through the digital ecosystem.
In an attempt to foster greater transparency, Musk announced in January 2026 that X would begin publishing the algorithmic code that determines what users see in their feeds and advertisements. "We will make the new X algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed," Musk posted on X (Asbury Park Press). Whether this move will help users better understand—or trust—the platform’s inner workings remains to be seen.
For now, the frequency of outages is raising hard questions about X’s reliability as a communications platform. As USA TODAY pointed out, the outage on Presidents’ Day was the fifth such incident since November 2025. For a company with hundreds of millions of users and a pivotal role in global discourse, that’s a concerning trend. Each time the service goes down, it fuels speculation about the resilience of X’s infrastructure and the effectiveness of its crisis response.
Meanwhile, users have taken to other platforms to vent their frustration, share memes about the outage, and speculate about the cause. Some lament the lack of transparency, while others simply shrug it off as another quirk of life in the digital age. After all, if there’s one thing the modern internet has taught us, it’s that even the giants can stumble. But as X continues to grapple with technical issues, the stakes remain high—not just for Elon Musk and his team, but for the millions who rely on the platform every day.
With service now restored and no official explanation provided, users are left to wonder: Is this the new normal for X, or can the platform regain its footing as a reliable digital town square? Only time—and perhaps a bit more transparency—will tell.