Several users of X (formerly Twitter) were puzzled on May 24 when their timelines began showing posts with a timestamp of “01 Jan 70.” The issue appeared shortly after the platform experienced a global outage, prompting confusion over whether the platform had glitched or time-traveled.
What’s happening
Users browsing the “For You” tab within notifications are finding posts—dated 01 Jan 70. It is to be noted that the posts are new, it's just the timestamp thats living in 1970.
This odd timestamp isn’t random; it points to what is known in computing as the “Unix epoch,” the default time reference of 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970.
Why this may be happening
In programming, the Unix epoch begins at midnight UTC on January 1, 1970. When a timestamp reads “0” or isn’t set properly, systems often default to this baseline. This kind of error usually occurs when data is missing, or if a server-side function fails to fetch or render time data correctly after an outage.
Despite the visual glitch, the posts remained accessible, and no user data appeared to be lost.
No official comment from X
As of this writing, Elon Musk’s X has not issued a formal explanation for the error or its link to the platform disruption.
Outage details
X experienced a major global outage earlier in the evening on May 24. Downdetector showed over 25,000 incident reports by 6:07 PM IST. About 68% were related to the app, 24% to the website, and 8% to server connections. Users reported being unable to log in, post, or view timelines. The glitch seems to have followed this disruption.
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