America

'Massive cyber attack' behind X outage, Elon Musk reveals — thousands across UK unable to load Twitter posts

Social network X, formerly known as Twitter, is experiencing difficulties across the UK and USA

GETTY IMAGES
Aaron Brown

By Aaron Brown


Published: 10/03/2025

- 19:34

Updated: 11/03/2025

- 09:40

Outage also appears to be impacting Grok AI, which is built into X

  • X, formerly Twitter, has struggled to stay online all day (March 10)
  • Users in the UK and USA have found the social platform unresponsive
  • "Something went wrong" appears when X is not working
  • Elon Musk has confirmed a "massive cyber attack" is behind the outage
  • There's no word on when the issue will be fixed
  • The 53-year-old billionaire hasn't revealed who is behind the attack on X
  • But Musk agreed with the claim the attack is "to silence" the platform

X, formerly known as Twitter, is not working for many social network users across the UK and USA. Trying to load new posts, formerly known as tweets, results in an error message stating: "Something went wrong. Try reloading."

For some, this error message never appears and X shows an endless loading animation. The widespread issue appears to impact those accessing X in a web browser, as well as iOS and Android apps.

GBN Tech was able to recreate the problems with X throughout the day on March 10, 2025.

According to independent website Down Detector, more than 9,000 people across the UK are experiencing issues with the social media website. In the USA, the number of reports explodes to 17,000 every minute.

graph from down detector showing the spike in reports in outages on X

X, formerly known as Twitter, has been experiencing difficulties throughout the last 12-hours. Elon Musk says thousands across the UK and United States have struggled to load new posts/tweets because of a 'cyber attack' on the site

DOWN DETECTOR UK

And now, Elon Musk has commented on the cause of the outages. The multi-billionaire claims his social media site X has been the victim of a “massive cyber attack” — triggering the sporadic outages throughout the day.

The 53-year-old Tesla and SpaceX boss posted on Monday: “There was (still is) a massive cyber attack against 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.”

One user replied: “They want to silence you and this platform”, to which Musk replied “Yes”.

Elon Musk acquired the social network site, then known as Twitter, in October 2022 for an eye-watering price tag of $44 billion. The electric car evangelist's takeover of Twitter sparked a tumultuous era for the social media giant.

After a brief legal battle, Musk took control and immediately implemented sweeping changes. The most dramatic shift came in July 2023 when Twitter was rebranded as "X," aligning with Musk's vision of creating an "everything app".

The restructuring was brutal, with Musk slashing nearly 80% of Twitter's workforce, reducing the headcount from around 8,000 to approximately 1,500 employees by April 2023. This drastic downsizing was justified by Musk as necessary to address the company's financial challenges and streamline operations.

Performance metrics since the rebranding have been mixed.

While X reports growth and increased user sign-ups, independent studies suggest a decline in engagement. Edison Research found a 30% drop in usage across the United States from 2023 to 2024. However, X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims the platform still boasts 90 million users in the US alone.

elon musk pictured with a lanyard during the ai conference in the UK

Elon Musk, who served as Chief Executive of SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company for years, acquired Twitter for $44bn almost three years ago

PRESS ASSOCIATION

US President Donald J Trump splits his time between X — he was previously banned from Twitter after the January 6 insurrection — and his own rival platform, Truth Social. The tumult at X has spawned several alternatives, including Mastodon and BlueSky. The latter was co-created by Jack Dorsey, who was also the founder of Twitter.

Under Elon Musk's leadership, X introduced Community Notes to fact-check posts on the social network. This approach will now be copied by Mark Zuckerberg across his suite of immensely-popular social media networks, including Instagram and Facebook. The Meta chief executive evenly directly referenced the introduction of Community Notes as inspiration for the switch.

Grok AI, introduced by xAI in November 2023, has become a cornerstone of X's (formerly Twitter) user experience.

This advanced chatbot, now in its third iteration, offers real-time information access, image generation, and document summarisation across the platform. Initially exclusive to premium subscribers, Grok is now available to all X users, with free-tier access limited to 10 text prompts every two hours and three image generations.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Powered by the Grok-3 model and leveraging the Aurora model for image creation, Grok can be accessed via X's platform, a standalone app, or by mentioning it in replies. Despite its capabilities, Grok has faced accuracy challenges, occasionally misinterpreting trending topics or false information.

Tech