On X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—retailers are still experiencing the worst connectivity issues. These matters follow months of service disruptions. Since Elon Musk bought the company in 2022, new challenges have emerged. He made it even more challenging when he bought it for a mind-boggling $44 billion. Since then, the platform has faced a stormy landscape, highlighted by historic waves of employee layoffs and large-scale technical disasters.
Initially, X employed approximately 7,500 individuals. But soon after Musk took over, he slashed the staff by roughly 80%, down to just 1,300 employees. This massive reduction in resources has led to questions about the platform’s long term stability and security. Indeed, recent reports claimed that as of January 2023, X had just 550 full-time engineers on staff. This relatively small workforce is probably not enough to tackle the complexities of the platform efficiently.
Connectivity problems have hit X on several occasions in the last year. To add to the district’s woes, in December 2022 and again in July 2023, the platform experienced major outages. These outages led to the inability of users to access feeds and create and consume content. Most recently, users faced the ordeal of their timelines refusing to update in late May.
On May 22, 2025, X’s Engineering account posted about these persisting problems.
“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.” – Engineering (@XEng)
This acknowledgment comes after the last major service disruption in March 2023, when users worldwide faced abrupt disconnections from the platform. During this crisis, people had a hard time being able to send messages, even find message content to personalize. Musk later claimed the March disruption was caused by a cyber attack, but offered no evidence to support this accusation.
Beyond connectivity problems, X has experienced a number of security breaches since Musk took over. Authorities pointed to servers that had been configured incorrectly, which left the platform open to denial-of-service attacks. These security vulnerabilities bring serious concerns over the safety of Twitter users and enforcement of data privacy protections on the platform.
Additionally, a September 2023 fire at an X-leased data center just outside of Portland, Oregon, exacerbated the situation, leading to complete service shutdowns. Even as X climbs these challenges, it hasn’t escaped a roiling criticism storm over its impact operationally.
Fast forward to November 2024, when a second round of largescale layoffs hit X, mainly targeting its engineering branch. These cuts have increased alarm about the company’s capacity to both deliver high-quality service and grow revenues in a safe, reliable manner.
