Elon Musk's X becomes top trending topic on China's Weibo after outage, taking many netizens by surprise
Elon Musk's X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, has become a top trending topic on Chinese equivalent Weibo after an outage, even though X is not directly accessible in mainland China.
The topic #TwitterDown topped the trending list on Weibo on Thursday afternoon and stayed on it around two-and-a-half hours, attracting 190 million views and 83,000 engagements, according to data from the Chinese microblogging site.
X can only be accessed through a virtual private network in mainland China as it is blocked by the country's Great Firewall.
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The focus on X has surprised many Chinese netizens, given that it cannot be accessed directly.
Financial influencer Xiyangsimu, followed by 1.4 million on Weibo, jokingly asked "what is Twitter" and if it was time to "find out who is bypassing the Great Firewall", a censorship tool used to block access to Western platforms such as Google and X.
X was down for more than an hour on Thursday and the platform was unable to refresh timelines.
The desktop version continues to display a placeholder message saying "Welcome to X! This is the best place to see what's happening in your world. Find some people and topics to follow now."
Weibo chief executive Wang Gaofei, who goes by the pseudonym Laiquzhijian, commented that the placeholder was better than the Chinese site's own version in such circumstances.
In a response to an emailed inquiry on Thursday about the outage, X replied "busy now, please check back later".
X was restored globally later on Thursday, with over 77,000 US users facing issues at the peak of the outage, Reuters reported.
Users in Canada, Britain, France and other countries reported issues with accessing both X and X Pro, and over 7,000 users in Canada and Britain experienced issues with the platform.
The outage occurred just two days after Musk, who acquired the social media platform in 2022, boasted about its "strong growth". He retweeted news about X's site traffic being up 22.3 per cent in November from a year earlier.
Last week, all outgoing links from X stopped working for roughly an hour, according to technology news outlet The Verge, and a similar issue occurred in March.
The company has laid off more than 5,000 employees in multiple rounds of job cuts since late 2022, when Musk sought to reduce expenses.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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