For roughly one chaotic hour today, DownDetector.com saw a massive spike in reported issues with Elon Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter).
Right around 11 a.m. ET/ 3 p.m. UK time on Wednesday, March 18, a dramatic spike appeared on the DownDetector website (where users submit reports of issues with all kinds of platforms and services). It's the third potential in as many months, too; we previously reported users were having issues with X about a month ago, on February 16.
See our coverage of the outage below.
A major spike
As described above, we've just seen a dramatic influx of users reporting issues with X.com, with over 14000 registered around 11 a.m. ET (3 p.m. UK time, as shown in the graph above).
Tom's Guide staff experiencing X.com issues
While I'm getting up to speed on the potential X.com outage, I asked my TG colleagues to check if they were experiencing issues, and the first one to jump in with an answer was Computing Managing Editor Jason England, who supplied the below screenshot showing he's not able to access his feed:
StatusGator reports potential outage, too
Alongside DownDetector, I also checked StatusGator, and, likewise, it also indicates that there are potential problems with the platform, too, with user reports indicating issues like the app not loading or receiving error messages.
Looks like there are X.com issues across the US
Turning back to DownDetector once again, I pulled up their heat map, which indicates they're receiving reports from users across the US, with particular hotspots in major cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
Over 25,000 reports now
Reports continue to pour in; last time DownDetector's data refreshed, it was displaying over 26,000 reports of issues with the platforms. Seems like this must be a widespread issue.
Dropping rapidly already
Almost as quickly as that spike started, it's dropped significantly; we're already back down around 14,600 user reports.
Just a blip?
Looks like whatever potential issue there may have been (if there was one) could be dealt with. I'm continuing to see the spike trending back down: we're already under 1000 reports once again, and colleagues are telling me they are seeing their X.com feeds once more. Just a blip?
Anecdotally, I did see other users asking whether there were issues with the platform on Reddit, too.
Almost back to normal
With Down Detector now showing fewer than 500 reported issues with X, it's safe to call today's outage resolved. That said, we'll continue to monitor the numbers and update you if things take a sudden turn in the opposite direction.
Happy tweeting!
All clear
Thanks for following our live coverage of today's X/Twitter outage. With reported issues remaining well under 1,000 for the past ~30 minutes, things seem to be largely back to normal.
Feel free to stop by the gift shop on your way out to pickup a limited edition "I survived the great X/Twitter outage of March 18, 2026" t-shirt and other accessories.
