A significant technical failure at X, formerly known as Twitter, struck on Tuesday, 13 January 2026, disrupting the service for millions of users globally and within the UK. The outage arrived at a moment of intense scrutiny for Elon Musk's platform, as UK regulators launched a formal probe into its AI chatbot, Grok.
Widespread Disruption Hits User Feeds
By early afternoon on Tuesday, users began experiencing widespread problems loading posts, photos, and their main timelines. The issues were reported as intermittent failures rather than a complete blackout, with home feeds stalling, profiles showing error messages, and content refusing to refresh. The X mobile app was also affected, though some features like trending topics loaded sporadically for a limited number of people.
Tracking service DownDetector recorded over 7,000 user reports from the UK and the US, where complaints peaked earlier in the day due to the time difference. X does not maintain a public service status page and has not commented on the root cause of this latest disruption. Historically, the platform has endured a string of major outages since Musk's acquisition, including a prolonged failure in March 2025 that triggered 1.6 million reports and knock-on issues from global Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services blackouts.
Outage Lands Amid Public Sector Pressure and Grok Probe
The technical stumble coincided with mounting political and regulatory pressure in the United Kingdom. On Monday, 12 January, communications regulator Ofcom confirmed it had opened an investigation into whether X has taken sufficient steps to protect users from explicit deepfakes generated using its large language model, Grok.
Ofcom warned that alleged breaches "may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography" and could include sexualised images of children. This investigation aligns with government considerations for new legislation to ban non-consensual explicit images. Under the Online Safety Act, X could face fines of up to 10% of its global revenue or £18 million, whichever is higher, if found in breach.
Political Reactions and the Future of Self-Regulation
The outage and the Grok investigation have sharpened the political tone in Westminster. Tech Secretary Liz Kendall stated it was "vital that Ofcom complete this investigation swiftly because the public, and most importantly the victims, will not accept any delay." A spokesperson for the charity n10 welcomed Ofcom's move.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a direct warning to the platform, telling MPs earlier this week: "If X cannot control Grok, we will." This statement signals a potential end to the platform's ability to self-regulate if it fails to adequately police the risks associated with its own AI tools. The confluence of a major service outage and escalating regulatory action marks a critical juncture for X's operations and compliance in the UK market.
