Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered a significant worldwide outage on Monday, February 16, leaving tens of millions of users unable to access their feeds, post content, or log into the service.
Over 40,000 Reports Within Minutes
According to Downdetector, a service that tracks platform disruptions based on user-submitted reports, complaints about X surged to more than 41,000 around 8:40 a.m. Eastern Time. Users attempting to open the app or website were met with either a blank screen displaying only the X logo or a generic error message reading “Something went wrong.”
The outage struck without warning during peak morning hours, affecting major markets across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia, where the Arabic hashtag “عطل منصة إكس” quickly topped local trends on competing platforms, the disruption was felt acutely among the Kingdom’s highly connected population. Saudi Arabia ranks among the world’s highest per capita users of social media, and X remains a primary channel for public discourse, government communication, and business interaction.
A Pattern of Recurring Disruptions
Monday’s incident marks the third major outage for X in less than four months, following similar disruptions in January 2026 and November 2025. The November event was attributed to a widespread failure at Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure provider that supports large portions of the global web. The cause of the latest outage has not been officially confirmed by X or its leadership.
Industry analysts have pointed to the platform’s ongoing restructuring under Musk’s ownership as a potential contributing factor. Since acquiring the company in 2022, Musk has implemented sweeping staff reductions across engineering and infrastructure teams, moves that critics have argued may have weakened the platform’s resilience against both technical failures and external threats.
Impact on Saudi Arabia’s Digital Ecosystem
The outage underscores broader questions about digital infrastructure reliability at a time when Saudi Arabia is accelerating its own digital transformation under Vision 2030. Saudi government entities, businesses, and media organizations rely heavily on platforms like X for real-time communication with the public.
The Kingdom’s Communications, Space, and Technology Commission has previously emphasized the importance of digital resilience as part of the national technology strategy. Incidents like Monday’s outage serve as a reminder of the risks associated with heavy dependence on foreign-owned digital platforms, an area that Saudi Arabia’s growing tech sector is actively working to address through homegrown alternatives and infrastructure investments.
By mid-morning, reports on Downdetector had dropped sharply to roughly 1,200, suggesting the platform’s services were gradually being restored. X has not issued a formal statement regarding the cause of the disruption or steps being taken to prevent future incidents.
