Were you trying to watch your favorite show or listen to music on the night of October 15? And suddenly an error message appeared on your screen? If so, you are not alone. On Wednesday night, Alphabet-owned YouTube, the world’s largest video streaming platform, suddenly went down due to a major technical glitch. The global outage affected millions of users around the world, including the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. The incident has once again proven how dependent our daily lives are on big tech companies like Google.
What exactly happened?
Around 7 pm US time, users started experiencing problems using YouTube. Many were not able to load videos, while others were seeing messages like ‘no connection’ or ‘error’. The problem was not limited to the main YouTube app or website, but also affected other services like YouTube Music and YouTube TV. Those who relied on YouTube TV to watch news, sports or series suffered the most. On social media, especially on X (formerly Twitter), the hashtag #YouTubeDown quickly trended, and thousands of people started voicing their concerns.
What do the Downdetector numbers say?
According to Downdetector, a website and service outage tracker, the severity of the issue was clear. The issue peaked at 7:55 PM in the US, when more than 366,172 users simultaneously reported problems with YouTube. These figures are only for users who reported the issue themselves. This means that the actual number of people affected is likely to be much higher. In addition to the US, thousands of users in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia also reported the outage, making it clear that this is a global problem.
YouTube's official explanation
After a growing number of complaints from users, YouTube took note of the issue on its official X account. “We know that some of you are currently experiencing issues using YouTube services. Our team is monitoring and working on it.” About two hours later, YouTube shared another post saying that the issue has been resolved and all services are back to normal. Users can now watch videos on the main platform, YouTube Music and YouTube TV, they explained. However, neither YouTube nor its parent company Alphabet has given any reason for the technical glitch.
What could be the reason behind this major technical glitch?
Although YouTube has not explained the reason, experts believe that there could be some possible reasons for such a major outage.
Internal server problem: YouTube hosts billions of videos and serves millions of users every day. For this, a huge network of data centers and servers spread across the world is used. If any one key part of this network fails, the entire system can collapse.
Software update error: Technology companies are constantly rolling out new software updates to improve their services. Sometimes, these updates inadvertently leave a bug, which can cause major problems.
Network or DNS issues: The Domain Name System (DNS) acts like a phone book for the internet. If there is a problem with the DNS server, users’ devices cannot contact YouTube’s servers, causing the service to go down.
Cyberattack: Although unlikely, a cyberattack such as a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) can also cause the service to go down. However, YouTube has not provided any information about this, so it seems unlikely that this is the cause.
Impact on users and content creators
The outage had a major impact not only on ordinary users, but also on the millions of content creators whose income and careers depend on YouTube. For them, every minute of downtime means lost ad revenue and a loss of connection with their audience. The incident once again highlighted YouTube’s importance in the ‘creator economy’. On the other hand, for ordinary users, it was an unexpected disruption to their daily habits, from entertainment to information.
YouTube resolved the issue within a few hours and now all services are running smoothly, which is a relief. However, the incident has raised some important questions. It has made us realize how dependent our digital lives are on a few companies like Alphabet/Google. It will be important to see what steps companies take to prevent such incidents in the future. For now, the world’s largest video platform is back online, but the question of why this outage occurred remains unanswered.
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