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In a dramatic turn of events that rattled one of the world’s largest social platforms, X — the social media giant formerly known as Twitter — has been slowly clawing its way back to stability after suffering a sweeping service disruption on Thursday, May 22, 2025. The disruption was reportedly triggered by a fire at a leased data center in Hillsboro, Oregon.
The incident, which began around 2:12 PM Eastern (11:12 AM Pacific), led to a flood of user complaints on platforms like DownDetector. At its peak, the outage garnered nearly 6,000 reports ranging from inability to sign in, missing direct messages, timeline freezes, and posts refusing to load without multiple page refreshes. Both desktop and mobile users were affected, prompting widespread frustration and confusion.
Fire at the Center of the Storm
According to reports confirmed by multiple outlets, including Wired and Data Center Dynamics, the root cause of the outage was a fire that broke out in a battery room at the Hillsboro data center. The facility is leased by X and plays a critical role in the platform’s backend infrastructure. Though the fire did not spread beyond the battery containment area, the smoke and emergency response were enough to trigger a shutdown of key systems tied to X’s functionality.
Firefighters were able to contain the blaze quickly, and no injuries were reported. However, the damage to digital operations was already done.
Official Acknowledgment from X
Shortly after the outage began, X’s official Engineering account posted an update acknowledging performance issues.
“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today,” the team wrote. “We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.”
Despite this acknowledgment, updates from the company remained sparse over the next 24 hours. Users continued to face intermittent disruptions, especially when trying to log in, load timelines, or send messages.
By Friday morning, May 23, the company updated its developer platform to indicate that the “site-wide outage” had been resolved as of 10:35 AM Pacific. Still, the same page noted that several services — notably login and signup — were still experiencing “degraded performance.”
Silence and Speculation
Perhaps the most puzzling part of the ordeal was the silence from X’s top leadership. Elon Musk, who acquired the platform in 2022 and has since been the public face of most major company announcements, remained uncharacteristically quiet about the outage. No posts from Musk or senior executives were issued as the platform’s users scrambled for answers.
The lack of timely transparency invited speculation. Was the company aware of deeper infrastructural vulnerabilities? Was the Oregon data center fire a singular event, or did it reveal broader systemic issues in how X handles failovers and redundancies?
At this point, those questions remain unanswered.
The Broader Implications
Outages like this expose just how vulnerable even the most prominent digital platforms can be. In today’s always-on, globally connected world, millions rely on platforms like X not just for entertainment or news, but for real-time communication, business promotion, and even customer service.
The situation also highlights the increasing importance of data center resilience and risk management, particularly when facilities are located in areas prone to environmental hazards. Battery room fires are rare but not unheard of in the data center world, and they can quickly escalate if safety systems don’t kick in swiftly.
Lessons for Users and Tech Giants Alike
For users, the outage served as a sharp reminder of the risks of over-reliance on a single digital channel for communication and visibility. For tech companies, it’s yet another example of why transparency, infrastructure investment, and redundancy planning are not optional — they’re essential.
As of Saturday morning, most of X’s core features appear to be back online, though the platform is still recovering from the ripple effects of the outage. Some users report needing to clear their browser cache or log out and back in to restore normal function.
Whether this incident will prompt X to re-evaluate its infrastructure strategy remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: in the high-stakes world of social media, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a reputation risk.