Thousands of users on X, formerly Twitter, faced a brief outage early Tuesday, January 13. Many users said their home feed would not load during the disruption. Outage tracking website Down Detector showed a sharp spike in complaints, as per a USA Today report. More than 24,000 users reported issues by 9:20 a.m. ET. Reports started falling around 9:40 am as services slowly improved.
By about 10 a.m. ET, the problem appeared to be mostly resolved. Most users said they could again see posts on their home feed. The outage lasted less than an hour for many people. During the disruption, users saw error messages on their main timeline. However, some parts of the platform kept working. The trending topics page continued to load for many users.
This led to confusion among users. Some thought the platform had crashed completely. Others believed only certain features were affected.
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Users across different regions reported similar problems. Most complaints came from the United States. But users in other countries also flagged issues. Many users shared their frustration on other platforms. Some posted screenshots of error messages. Others joked about how often social media goes down.
For some users, the outage affected work and communication. Many journalists, businesses, and creators depend on X. Even a short outage can disrupt news flow and online campaigns. X did not immediately give a clear reason for the outage. The company has not confirmed what caused the problem. There was also no official statement during the early hours.
This incident again highlights how fragile digital platforms can be. Even short technical problems can affect millions of people. Social media has become part of daily life for many users. Users today expect platforms to work without breaks. Even a few minutes of downtime feels long. Trust depends on smooth and reliable service.
Past Cloudflare issues could be the reason?
In recent months, X has faced several technical issues. Many of them were linked to problems at Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a major company that supports internet infrastructure. Late last year, Cloudflare faced two major outages. The first happened on November 18, 2025. The second occurred on December 5, 2025.
During both incidents, many popular websites were affected. X was one of the platforms that went down. Users across the world reported slow or broken services. Cloudflare later said those outages were not caused by cyberattacks. The November issue led to widespread internet disruption. The December outage followed an internal system change.
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That system change was meant to improve performance. Instead, it caused several websites to go offline. X was among the platforms that suffered. Because of this history, many users again blamed Cloudflare. However, there is no proof yet that Cloudflare caused Tuesday’s issue. The cause of the outage remains unclear.
X has gone through many changes in recent years. It has seen leadership shifts, policy changes, and technical updates. These changes have sometimes caused service issues. For now, X appears to be working normally again. Most users say their feeds are loading fine. No major issues have been reported after 10 a.m.
As platforms grow bigger, outages may still happen. But how companies respond matters most. Speed, honesty, and fixes shape user trust. Tuesday’s outage may be brief, but it left a mark. It reminded users how dependent they are on digital platforms. It also showed how quickly problems can spread online.
