After Neglecting Tesla, Elon Musk Now Abandons X: $44B Platform Faces Turmoil and Growing User Distrust

Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has suffered another significant technical failure, leading to thousands of user reports and widespread frustration across the globe. The latest outage is part of a growing pattern that not only highlights the platform’s technical instability under Musk’s ownership, but also deepens the erosion of user trust—further shaking confidence in what was once the world’s leading real-time social media platform.

This marks the second major crash for X in less than a month, and it comes at a time when users, investors, and critics are already questioning Musk’s capacity to juggle leadership of multiple high-profile companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. Today’s disruption is yet another black mark on a $44 billion acquisition that continues to generate more controversy than innovation.

The outage began to unfold in the early afternoon, with Downdetector—a real-time outage tracking service—reporting a dramatic spike in user complaints. At its peak around 3 PM local time, over 1,900 users had reported issues accessing the platform. Although the number of reports dipped slightly afterward, by 4 PM the complaints surged again to roughly 1,700, indicating that the problems were far from resolved.

The vast majority of the issues—around 74%—were reported on the mobile app, while only 25% came from users accessing X via desktop. Another 1% of reports related to the comments section specifically, but the primary pain point was the inability to load or retrieve posts.

Users were repeatedly met with error messages such as, “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” or “Cannot retrieve posts at this time. Please try again later.”

The downtime impacted users across key UK cities including Glasgow, London, Manchester, and Birmingham, according to Downdetector’s geolocation analysis.

The digital reaction was swift and brutal. Frustrated users flooded social media—ironically, often using X itself when functional—to voice their irritation.

“Is Twitter down again? My God,” wrote one user, echoing a sentiment many long-time users have increasingly come to share.

Another quipped, “Is your X down now, folks?”—a wry nod to the platform’s controversial rebranding from Twitter to X, which remains a point of confusion and mockery for many.

Still others took a jab at Musk directly. “Thank you Elon, for being so competent,” read one sarcastic comment on Downdetector.

The outage sparked a wave of memes and GIFs. One particularly viral post featured a man frantically searching on X to find out whether X was down, highlighting the paradox of using a broken platform to verify its own failure. Another user reposted an old video of a chaotic escalator pile-up, captioning it, “Everyone going to search if Twitter/X is down.”

As X floundered, rival platforms seized the moment. Bluesky, a decentralized social network that gained traction after Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, saw a surge in engagement. Users on Bluesky openly celebrated X’s outage, calling it a “gift” and another example of Musk’s mismanagement.

The competition between the two platforms has intensified over the past year, with Bluesky often positioned as the spiritual successor to pre-Musk Twitter—offering a more stable, open-source alternative for disillusioned users. Every outage at X becomes another marketing opportunity for its competitors.

Since Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and subsequently rebranded it to X, the platform has been in near-constant flux. The billionaire’s ambitious plans for an “everything app”—combining social media, payments, and even job applications—have yet to materialize in a cohesive or reliable product.

Instead, users have seen a stripped-down version of the platform plagued by outages, erratic policy changes, and declining moderation standards.

At the same time, Musk’s attention has been increasingly split. Tesla shareholders have expressed concern that Musk is devoting too much time to X, while SpaceX continues to expand its commercial spaceflight operations and Starlink ambitions.

Ironically, those fears have now inverted. As Musk appears to shift more of his focus back to Tesla, especially after the company's recent slide in EV market share, X seems to be suffering from neglect.

Industry analysts point to a clear pattern: under Musk’s leadership, X has become less stable, less transparent, and less trusted. “The platform no longer feels like a reliable space for real-time conversation or breaking news,” says tech analyst Jordan White of NetMotive Research. “Every crash further distances users from the platform, and trust, once lost, is hard to regain.”

Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter was one of the most high-profile tech deals in history. It also remains one of the most controversial.

The constant turbulence—ranging from staff layoffs and leadership reshuffles to advertiser boycotts—has cratered the platform’s valuation. Some private equity analysts now estimate the company is worth less than half its original acquisition price, and that may be optimistic given its ongoing technical failures and loss of public goodwill.

Advertisers, once the lifeblood of Twitter’s revenue, have pulled back significantly. With user activity becoming less reliable and moderation policies perceived as inconsistent, many major brands have redirected their social media spend to competitors like LinkedIn, TikTok, and even Reddit.

The road ahead for X is uncertain. For a platform that once set the pace for real-time global discourse, today’s instability raises deep questions about its future relevance.

While outages can happen to any tech platform, the frequency and lack of transparency under Musk’s leadership have fueled a growing exodus of users, influencers, and advertisers. Musk may have envisioned X as a reinvention of social media—but as of now, it’s struggling to even function as a basic messaging service.

Without clear leadership, technical investment, or a consistent product vision, X risks becoming a digital ghost town—a $44 billion warning of what happens when ambition outpaces infrastructure.

In his quest to transform Twitter into something new, Elon Musk may be dismantling the very foundation that made it valuable. As users face yet another outage, and competitors cheer from the sidelines, one thing is increasingly clear: the Musk era of X is defined less by innovation and more by instability.