X Outage Update: X outage hit 42K+ users globally, spiking in India, UK, US and Frequent glitches raise questions on stability amid heavy traffic and tech woes. Services back in 1 hour, no official word.
Graph showing Downdetector spike of 42,261 X outage reports worldwide with peaks in India (3,357) and UK (10,958) on February 16, 2026 (Photo: File)
X Outage Update: X's social media empire, once a bastion of real-time chatter under Elon Musk's watch, stumbled again on February 16, 2026. Thousands worldwide faced frozen feeds and cryptic error messages like "Something went wrong, but don’t fret" or "Try reloading." This glitch echoes a troubling pattern, testing user loyalty in an era of nonstop digital demands.
Downdetector recorded over 42,000 global complaints with the United States alone recording over 41,000 complaints by 8:24 a.m. ET. In India, there were approximately 3,357 user reports of issues with the services at around 7:30 p.m. IST with 53% of issues related to app glitches, 22% related to feed issues and 16% related to website issues. After an hour, all services came back online, but there was no word from X, leaving people frustrated.
Across the pond, UK users also felt the effects. By 7:11 p.m., reports rose to 10,958 and the breakdown showed 56% relating to the app, 21% relating to timelines and 17% relating to the site. The issue mirrors another from one month ago when 200,000 users were impacted by an outage. The issue then was relating to the app at 56%, according to Variety data and there were no company statements regarding the issue.
India’s share was no one-off, either, as 3,357 reports stood out from recent dips, though they couldn't compare to January’s 6,000+ surge, which came from a global figure of over 77,000. Livemint noted the complaints about website issues with mobile apps lagging behind. Local server issues at 7 p.m. IST, coinciding with the time of the AI Impact Summit conversations, indicated regional issues with the market, which hosts more than 500 million social users.
Social media brands like X, Instagram and Facebook continue to stumble again and again, the reason behind these problems is the combination of AI-driven features causing problems, increased cyber security issues and the pressure of hosting mega events, pushing infrastructure to its limits.
For example, consider November 2025, when a Cloudflare-supported global outage took X and other brands offline, followed by May, with its 41% login failure rate with over 5 billion users worldwide, these brands are managing hyperscale data with 600 million daily actives for X, increasing the risk of problems and with geopolitical hacks and much of the codebase not being patched, you can see the problem developing. Gartner calculates that outages in 2025 will cost companies over $100 billion.
How long did the outage last?
About one hour globally, per Downdetector trends.
Was it just India?
No—US (41K+), UK (11K), and others hit hard too.
Did X confirm the cause?
No, X has not confirmed the cause of the outage. Their engineering team stayed silent, offering no public statement or post on the issue despite the widespread disruptions. This pattern holds from past incidents, leaving users to speculate via Downdetector trends.tomsguide+3
How to Monitor Future X Outages
Monitor future X outages via Downdetector for user-report spikes or status.x.com for official updates, though responses are often delayed. Quick checks Search "#XDown" on X or use IsItDownRightNow.
Will this recur?
Likely, given 2025's pattern of 5+ major X downtimes.
