Joe Yates
Twitter has been hit by a 'major cyber attack', its owner Elon Musk has reported.
With the Tesla CEO's social media platform having reportedly gone down several times today (March 10), he has now addressed the issue.
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He wrote: "There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X.
"We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.
"Tracing …"
The tech billionaire was responding to an account that was speculating that instead of his site simply experiencing technical issues, that instead he was under attack.
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The user posted: "First, protests against DOGE. Then, Tesla stores were attacked. Now, X is down.
"I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on X."
They were referencing protests against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk is heading up, as well as claims that Tesla was also under attack.
Meanwhile, another user messaged Musk saying 'they want to silence you and this platform', to which he replied 'yes'.
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According to the website Downdetector.com, a platform that provides users with real-time information about the status of various websites and services, as many as 40,000 people reported having experienced issues with Twitter by around 10am Eastern Time.
Downdetector.com also noted that 63 percent of the issues that users had experienced were reported from people using the app, with 30 percent claiming they were trying to gain access through its web browser.
Fans took to the social media platform to vent their frustration: "When you think Twitter is down but you can’t go on Twitter to see if #TwitterDown is trending because Twitter is down."
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A second typed: "How many more times is X/Twitter going to go down?"
While someone else joked: "Twitter went down for 2 hours and I started going through withdrawal….maybe it’s time for me to touch some grass."
"Why does Twitter keep going DOWN?!?!?! Fix it! (And it’s not just me. I’m texting with Twitter pals clear across the country)," added another.
Musk bought Twitter back in October 2022 for $44 billion, changing its name from 'Twitter' to 'X' shortly after.
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In December, Axios reported that investment film Fidelity estimated his takeover tanked the site's value by 72 percent - with the publications claiming it dropped to some $32 billion less than Musk's initial purchase value, making it worth around $12.3 billion overall.