Last updated: (JST)
[BREAKING] Why X (Twitter) and ChatGPT Are Down: Large-Scale Outage at Cloudflare
From the night of November 18, 2025 (JST), users have been experiencing issues such as “X (Twitter) won’t load” and “ChatGPT (web version) is not responding or shows errors.”
The root cause is a large-scale network incident at Cloudflare, an infrastructure company that powers and protects a huge number of websites and online services around the world.
In this article, we focus on the very practical questions users are asking right now: “Why is X down?” “Why is ChatGPT not working?”
and summarize what is known so far based on publicly available information.
* As of now, I have confirmed that the ChatGPT mobile app is still accessible.
1. What Is Happening Right Now? (Short Summary)
- On the morning of November 18, 2025 (US Eastern Time), Cloudflare’s network began experiencing issues.
- As a result, X, ChatGPT, and many other services started to suffer access problems.
- Cloudflare has stated that an “internal service degradation” caused by an abnormal spike in traffic is behind the incident.
- Recovery work is in progress. Some services are partially back, but error rates are still higher than usual.
Converted to Japan time, it seems that the impact started to visibly appear around 20:00–21:00 on November 18 (JST).
2. Why Is X (Twitter) Not Working?
Multiple international media outlets have reported X as one of the major services affected by this Cloudflare outage.
X relies on Cloudflare’s network for things like image delivery and some parts of its API traffic. When errors occur on Cloudflare’s side, users can see symptoms such as:
- Timeline not refreshing
- Posts failing with an error
- Images and videos not loading
- “Internal Server Error (500)” or similar error messages
It’s important to understand that this does NOT mean X has been hacked, nor that your personal account has been suspended.
The problem lies in the intermediate layer — Cloudflare — that sits in front of X as a traffic relay and protection system, and that layer is currently unstable.
3. Why Is the ChatGPT Web Version Not Working?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has also been reported as affected by this incident.
In particular, the web version of ChatGPT passes through Cloudflare’s security gateway and CDN (content delivery network). When that layer has issues, users can experience:
- Login page not loading or timing out
- Endless loading when trying to open ChatGPT
- 5xx error pages appearing instead of the normal UI
On the other hand, the ChatGPT mobile app communicates over a different path (a mobile-focused API route), so the impact is relatively smaller.
This is why we see the strange situation where “the app still works, but the browser version is down.”
It’s not that the app is being treated specially — it’s simply that the network route it uses is different.
As of this writing, there has been no official announcement from OpenAI stating that “ChatGPT is fully restored.” For now, its availability is still largely tied to Cloudflare’s recovery status.
4. Root Cause: Abnormal Traffic Spikes and Network Issues at Cloudflare
Cloudflare is an infrastructure company that provides security, performance optimization, and traffic management for websites and online services worldwide.
According to media reports and Cloudflare’s own status page, the current incident was triggered by an abnormal spike in traffic targeting a particular service, which then caused problems in Cloudflare’s internal network routes.
As a result, many services that rely on Cloudflare started returning HTTP 500 errors and other failures, making sites like X and ChatGPT simultaneously unstable across the globe.
At the moment, Cloudflare has not officially concluded that this was a cyberattack (such as a DDoS attack) and continues to list the cause as “under investigation.”
5. Rough Timeline (Converted to Japan Time)
Based on various media reports and Cloudflare’s status updates, here is a rough timeline converted into JST:
- Nov 18, 20:20–20:40 (JST)
In the early morning in US Eastern Time (around 6:20–6:40), reports of access problems to X, ChatGPT, and other services start to surge. - Nov 18, 20:40–21:00 (JST)
Cloudflare detects “internal service degradation” and “abnormal traffic” and begins investigation. - Nov 18, 21:00–22:00 (JST)
Cloudflare announces that it has identified the issue and is rolling out a fix.
Some services begin to recover gradually, but Cloudflare warns that error rates may remain higher than normal for some time.
As of the time of writing (night of November 18, JST), no official “all clear” time has been given.
The situation may continue to evolve as Cloudflare and affected services update their status.
6. What Users Can and Cannot Do
This incident is fundamentally an infrastructure problem on Cloudflare’s side.
It is not something that regular users can fix by changing settings on their own devices.
✅ Things You Can Try
- Switch between Wi-Fi and 4G/5G to see if a different route works better.
- Restart your browser or app and test again after a short while.
- Wait some time and try accessing the service again later.
❌ Things That Usually Won’t Help
- Factory-resetting your smartphone or PC (the issue is not on your device).
- Changing your password out of fear of hacking (this is not an account breach issue).
- Immediately changing your internet contract assuming “only my line is broken.”
To repeat: your smartphone or PC is almost certainly not broken.
What you are experiencing is essentially the side effect of a global infrastructure outage.
7. Summary: X and ChatGPT Are Down as Part of a Global Outage
- The main reason X (Twitter) and ChatGPT are not reachable right now is a large-scale outage at Cloudflare.
- Cloudflare is critical infrastructure for countless services, so its instability affects a wide range of sites at once.
- Recovery work is in progress, but it is still too early to say that everything has fully recovered.
- The issue is not with your device or your account; for the most part, all you can do is wait for the infrastructure to stabilize.
If Cloudflare or any major service providers release additional official statements, I will update this article accordingly.
X (Twitter): https://x.com/Kantanstart
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kantanstart
