X Outage: 40,000 users affected this Monday morning

This Monday, February 16, 2026, starting at 2:02 PM Paris time, tens of thousands of users were faced with a frustrating error message: “Something went wrong”. The X platform, formerly Twitter, experienced another major outage with over 40,000 reports in the United States according to Downdetector.

The United Kingdom, the Philippines, and Costa Rica were also affected by this sudden service interruption. As a regular X user following Tesla news and interacting with the community, I also faced this outage, which paralyzed my usual tech monitoring.

This new failure raises concerning questions about the reliability of the platform’s infrastructure, especially given the recurrence of these incidents in recent months.

A morning outage paralyzing the global platform

The incident began precisely at 8:02 AM Eastern Time, which is 2:02 PM in France. This timing proved particularly critical: American users were starting their workday while Europeans were checking the platform during their lunch break or in the early afternoon.

The geographic spread quickly revealed the global scale of the problem:

• Over 40,000 reports in the United States
• About 6,000 reports in the United Kingdom
• Hundreds of users affected in the Philippines and Costa Rica

The generic “Something went wrong” error message appeared on both the mobile app and the web version, completely preventing normal use of the platform. It was impossible to load the news feed, publish posts, or even access direct messages.

Personally, this outage prevented me from sharing my morning observations on the latest developments of the Tesla Supercharger network, an important daily routine for staying connected with the owner community.

Tens of thousands of users report access problems

Downdetector figures reveal the scale of the problem

Downdetector, the go-to platform for tracking technical incidents in real time, recorded a massive spike in reports from the very first minutes of the outage. This platform’s methodology, based on verified user feedback, provides a reliable barometer of the actual impact.

The numbers speak for themselves: with over 40,000 reports in the United States and 6,000 in the United Kingdom, this outage affected a significant number of users simultaneously. The issues were spread across the mobile app, the website, and various specific platform features.

A particularly problematic timing

The occurrence of this outage in the middle of the week, during professional working hours, amplified its negative impact. Community managers, journalists, and entrepreneurs who depend on X for their daily activities found themselves deprived of their main work tool.

For my part, I was just writing a thread about the new Tesla features announced the day before when the error appeared. This collective frustration highlights the lack of an immediate alternative for an audience accustomed to real-time communication.

The sudden interruption reminds us how much we depend on stable digital infrastructures for our daily interactions, whether professional or personal.

An outage history that raises questions about X’s stability

This February 16 outage is unfortunately not an isolated incident. In mid-January 2026, the platform had already experienced an even more massive failure with over 100,000 reports, which is 2.5 times the scale of the current incident.

In November 2025, another significant outage generated explicit technical error messages: “Internal server error / Error code 500”. That time, the problem seemed related to Cloudflare, the content delivery service used by X.

The finding is concerning: three major incidents in three months. This unusual frequency for a platform of this scale raises legitimate questions about the health of the technical infrastructure.

Comparatively, other social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn certainly experience occasional outages, but rarely with such recurrence over such a short period.

This situation leads me to reflect on the balance between technical investments and the development of new features. As a Tesla vehicle owner, I understand the crucial importance of a stable infrastructure: the Tesla ecosystem with its Superchargers and over-the-air updates demonstrates that rigorous maintenance is absolutely essential to guarantee an optimal user experience.

X’s silence in the face of technical questions

At the time of writing this article, no official communication from X had been published regarding this outage. This silence is questionable, especially in a context where users, particularly Europeans subject to GDPR, expect clear and transparent explanations.

Several questions remain unanswered:

• What is the exact technical cause? (server problem, network infrastructure failure, DDoS attack?)
• What was the total duration of the outage?
• What corrective measures were deployed?
• What guarantees are in place to prevent the recurrence of such incidents?

Other digital players adopt more proactive approaches with dedicated status pages and real-time communication during incidents. Discord or GitHub, for example, immediately inform their users and detail the corrective actions in progress.

For French and European users, the need for reliability is all the more crucial as X has become a major information tool. According to recent technical analyses, the stability of cloud infrastructures represents a strategic challenge for all large-scale digital platforms.

This situation reminds me of the importance of transparency in the automotive industry: Tesla systematically communicates on identified software problems and deploys fixes quickly via over-the-air updates. This approach strengthens user trust, even in the event of a temporary failure.

In the coming weeks, it will be essential to monitor the platform’s stability. If you were impacted by this outage, feel free to share your experience in the comments. For us, members of the Tesliens community, having reliable alternatives to stay connected is becoming a necessity in the face of these repeated incidents.