YouTube Experienced Widespread Global Outage; Problem Appears Fixed

YouTube appeared to be down on Wednesday when users in multiple regions of the world experienced difficulty when they tried viewing content on the video-sharing platform. This outage lasted for more than an hour.

Users reported that while video content on the site had their regular thumbnail images when they tried clicking on the videos to access the content, it kept spinning endlessly without playing. At some point, users reported that video content brought up popup messages of “an error occurred. Please try again later.”

This technical fault appeared on YouTube TV, and in movies and TV shows that users subscribed to using Google TV. The problem was seen across platforms such as desktops and mobile apps, as well as connected-TV devices such as Google Chromecast. On the other hand, YouTube ads refused to load.

YouTube acknowledged this technical outage via a Twitter post.

“If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone -our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We’ll follow up here with any updates,” YouTube tweeted at 7:23 p.m. ET.

Users across the United States and Europe began complaining of their inability to access video content around 6:45 p.m. ET, according to Down Detector. This website collects real-time reports of outages and service disruptions in their initial stages. It reported that most of the problems reported by users had to do with watching videos.

After about two hours, TeamYouTube reported that service had been restored.

“And we’re back – we’re so sorry for the interruption,” the company wrote. “This is fixed across all devices and YouTube services. Thanks for being patient with us.”

Users reported that indeed at about 9:00 p.m. ET, they could finally access content on the website. However, YouTube did not state the cause of the outage. When pressed for comments on the issue, a Google spokesperson declined to release additional details about the outage.

While some users still found it hard to access content, many users reported the resolution of the technical fault.

A technical outage is rare on YouTube. The video-sharing website has over 2 billion logged-in users’ visits each month. The platform experienced a global outage in 2018, with users unable to access content on the site for over an hour.

Source: cnet.com