Islamabad: Access to the popular social media platform X was gradually restored in Pakistan on Saturday after a widespread global outage disrupted services in multiple countries.
According to real-time monitoring site Downdetector, complaints surged after 5 pm, peaking at 372 reports by 5:36 pm, with a total exceeding 600 by late evening.
Users reported being unable to log into their accounts or send tweets during the outage.
However, by 8 pm, the volume of complaints had decreased significantly, signaling a return of the platform’s functionality in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) confirmed the global nature of the outage and clarified that Pakistan’s internet infrastructure was not responsible for the disruption.
The PTA stated that internet services across the country remained fully operational and no technical faults were detected at the national internet gateways.
Background on X’s Block and Restoration in Pakistan
X, formerly known as Twitter, was blocked in Pakistan on February 17, 2024, following allegations of widespread election rigging shared by a former bureaucrat.
Despite the block, the platform was quietly restored on May 7 amid heightened regional tensions following missile attacks by India on Pakistan, which sparked a brief conflict.
This recent outage was linked to a fire at X’s data centre in Hillsboro Technology Park, which broke out on Thursday morning.
Emergency teams responded to the incident, finding a battery room heavily filled with smoke. The fire was contained without spreading to other parts of the facility.
The outage caused widespread service interruptions affecting login, signup, notifications, and premium features, which persisted into Saturday as the company worked to resolve the issues.
