After a fire at a data center leased by X triggered a multi-day outage for the social media platform, CEO Elon Musk is getting heat for the system failure.
Fire crews responded to the Hillsboro, Oregon facility on Thursday morning, where the fire was traced to a room housing lithium batteries, WIRED reported. The room was reportedly filled with smoke, but the fire was contained, with officials remaining on scene to monitor conditions. Lithium-ion battery fires present unique challenges, as they require intensive cooling methods, emit dangerous chemicals, and are at risk of reigniting even after the initial blaze is extinguished.
The outage affected core functionality on X for days, including login issues, failed direct messages, and broken two-factor authentication (2FA). X's engineering team acknowledged the outage Thursday, blaming a data center failure but providing little follow-up since.
Anonymous sources confirmed to WIRED that the fire was behind the platform's instability. X previously consolidated its data infrastructure by shutting down a Sacramento center in 2022, transferring thousands of servers to Portland and Atlanta—moves that experts say may have increased risk.
The incident ignited a wave of derision across platforms like Bluesky and Reddit.
"Everything he makes catches on fire," a Bluesky user posted, with another sharing the same sentiment: "Everything this man touches burns."
"Oh so it's not just the Teslas and SpaceX rockets in Musk's business empire that are prone to exploding," wrote another. "It's the data servers too."
The outage fueled criticism of Musk's aggressive cost-cutting and staffing reductions, which some say have left X and its parent company xAI vulnerable to cascading failures.
"X needs a better IT department," a Reddit post said.
"I think the tech debt is catching up to them now," another hypothesized. "They reduced their head count, these are the consequences of the reduction."
"It's so shocking that in 2025 a website is down for more than 24 hours," said another Redditor. "This is what happens when you fire everyone, chop down everything."
While partial service was restored Saturday morning, reports of new outages spiked soon after, according to Tom's Guide.
For now, both the usability and reputation of X remain unstable.
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