Outgoing links affected by bizarre X outage, dealing another blow to billionaire Elon Musk

X (formerly Twitter) is currently facing a challenging period. Previously, the platform experienced a significant loss of advertisers due to an antisemitic controversy involving owner Elon Musk and another user. Musk further exacerbated the situation by stating during an interview at a conference that the departure of advertisers would lead to the shutdown of the social media site, using offensive language in the process. Recently, a new problem arose on the platform on December 14, as numerous users noticed an outage where outgoing links were non-functional for over an hour, displaying an error message upon clicking. Although the issue has reportedly been resolved, the company has not provided any explanation for the incident, which is worrisome considering it is not the first time such an occurrence has taken place.

According to a report by The Verge, URL links that took users to different websites saw a strange error message that said, “This page is down. I’m screaming. You’re screaming. We’re all screaming… to fix this page. Let’s stop joking around and get things starting soon.” The problem occurred at almost 1am on Thursday (still Wednesday afternoon in the US).

Weird X outage blocks outbound links

Usually, when you click on an external link that belongs to another website (as opposed to internally directed reposts), you are first sent to a redirect portal that captures the URL information and then sends you your route. However, this did not happen during the outages. Instead, users were sent to a redirect portal that only displayed an error message and did not process the link.

Interestingly, this is not the first time such an X outage has occurred. The Verge reported a similar issue in March 2023, when clicking links did nothing and even images wouldn’t load properly. During the brief outage, an error message was displayed when clicking on the link saying “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint.”

At the time, X’s official communication said it was due to an internal change that had some unintended consequences. However, the report suggested that it was likely due to a mistake by the company’s only reliability engineer, as Musk had fired the rest during his massive layoff.

These issues, along with forcing advertisers, point to a bumpy ride for the platform. How Musk, CEO Linda Yaccarino and other stakeholders navigate these difficult times remains to be seen.