If you're trying to access X on Friday afternoon (Eastern Time), you might be hitting a roadblock. That's what happened to me: I went to refresh my feed one last time before stepping away for the weekend, but noticed that nothing was loading. In fact, the site acted as if I had a brand-new account, and invited me to explore users to follow. But whenever I clicked anything, I'd just get errors.

I thought it might have just been on my end, because when I checked Downdetector , the site said: "User reports show no current problems with X (Twitter)." Indeed, the chart was flat, minus a small spike earlier today. But the comments were full of users talking about the site not working, confirming that I wasn't alone here. (Disclosure: ZiffDavis owns both Lifehacker and Downdetector.)

X has experienced plenty of similar instances of downtime, so, in all likelihood, the site will be back up soon.…