Social Media Platform X (Twitter) is Down - Here's Why
The social media platform X - previously known as Twitter before Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of the platform - started experiencing outages on a small scale on since May 22.
According to a report from Wired, a fire broke out at the data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, leased by Elon Musk’s X, "forcing an extended response from emergency crews."
"Firefighters arrived at the Hillsboro Technology Park, in a suburb west of Portland, at 10:21 am, according to Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich. They found a room with batteries that were deemed to be involved in the fire," Wired reported at the time. "Pich noted that the fire had not spread to other parts of the building, but said the room in question was heavy with smoke. As of 3:00 pm, the crew was still on the scene."
According to the report, X appears to lease space from a building linked to Digital Realty, one of the largest developers of data centers. Ryan Young, vie president of Americas operations for the company confirmed in a statement that there was a “fire-related incident at our PDX11 facility” but that it had been contained and that the fire department had left.
“All personnel were safely evacuated, with no reported injuries,” Young stated. “We continue to monitor the situation, prioritizing the safety of our personnel, the integrity of the facility, and minimizing customer impact.”
X appeared to confirm an issue - though without specifics - in a statement released on May 22.
“X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today,” the account posted. “We are experiencing a data center outage and the team is actively working to remediate the issue."
Functionality of the site eventually returned, but outages spiked once again on Saturday, May 24 when DownDefector noticed an increase in complaints.