Tech Radar – The social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has been having a very bad Monday so far, with users reporting its third outage of the day – and it might not be the last.
The first spike in reported problems on Downdetector happened at 10am ET, with X users in both the US and UK unable to get their usual fix of memes and outrage in the app or website.
Elon Musk has now commented and claimed that “there was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X”, which was “done with a lot of resources”. So that would explain why X is continuing to have major issues over eight hours on from when they started.
This is simply unacceptable.
First day of NFL Free Agency is maybe the biggest sports news day of the year on social media. This isn’t like you can watch the draft. And it’s just so much bigger than MLB trade deadline that you can’t really put the two in the same conversation based purely on volume of consumers. NFL stands alone and that’s not news.
Here’s what is – Khalil Mack to the Chargers. Drew Dalman to the Bears. Milton Williams clearing $26,000,000 annual. Dan Moore Jr. leaving Pittsburgh for Tennessee. Justin Fields to the Jets, potentially. And of course Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers.
That’s just a small taste and I want so much more. It’s become a silent yet powerful addiction over the last week of rumors and preparation. And now it’s cascading into a beautiful waterfall of Bears interior offensive line upgrades that naturally lend to draft speculation and nearly countless hypotheticals. It’s the sweetest spot of the offseason calendar for teams with cap space and I’ve been lapping it up like an old dirty dog.
All of that to say it’s complete fuckin bullshit that twitter is nowhere to be found today.
Maybe the worst performance in twitter history if I remember correctly. There’s probably some dark or darker moments, but the context behind today’s outage really chaps the rash on ass my cheeks.
And this is coming from a guy who is relentlessly trying to reduce his screen time on twitter. If anything, this would be celebrated in my life many times over on a normal day and under normal circumstances. It would be a slam-dunk convenient relief to turn my brain off from social media for however long we’re under attack.
Problem is I just announced this blog yesterday though, and so much action and conversation and direction comes from twitter. And as much as that blows, that’s a fact we can’t escape. I need twitter as bad as anything to keep this blog and it’s just not there today.
Personally I blame myself. I should have anticipated this more appropriately but some times you get caught up in BlackLetter fonts and Drew Dalman free agency implications. So please trust me – truthfully I didn’t see this coming and it really pisses me off.
With that in mind, here’s who I blame most
- China
And that’s a complete list.
I simply don’t trust the Chinese in matters of national cybersecurity and likely never will.
Sue me.