X outage breaks outgoing web links for users, fixed now

New Delhi, Dec 14: Elon Musk-run X suffered an outage where clicking on links resulted in an error message and users were unable to visit the outgoing web pages.

The problem with the URL redirect, that captures activity before sending users on their way to those URLs sent them to an error page instead.

“This page is down. I scream. You scream. We all scream... for us to fix this page. We’ll stop making jokes and get things up and running soon,” read the error message.

The issue was fixed later but there was no official work from X or Musk on what triggered the problem.

It seems that the platform’s legacy short-link redirection tool, t.co, was broken, according to reports.

Earlier this year, X has similar issues when clicking links within tweets didn’t work, and for several users, images wouldn’t load throughout their timelines.

“Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed,” the company had posted.

Musk later clarified that it was a “small API change” that had “massive ramifications.”

“A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite,” the X owner had posted.