Massive outage hits YouTube (UPDATE)

UPDATE: Google posted to its support page that an issue with its recommendations system prevented videos from appearing on “surfaces across YouTube “including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids”. Google says that it has the homepage back and is still working to bring up the rest of the site. The Alphabet unit also said, “We’re also seeing a small number of reports that some people are unable to login to YouTube TV. This is related to the broader issue across YouTube, and we’re also working on a fix here.”

Google posts a hopeful update. | Image by Google

The original story begins:

One of the most popular apps on your smartphone is currently experiencing an outage, according to Downdetector. YouTube, the streaming video app and website has received 320.346 complaints from users as of 8:09 pm EST. That compares to the near baseline 70 complaints received at 7:44 pm EST. ,56% of those submitting an issue report are havng problems with the YouTube app compared to 20% reporting that the YouTube website is down. 13% are having problems logging in.

YouTube is suffering a massive outage throughout the United States. | Image by PhoneArena

Comments from YouTube users are hitting Downdetector with one writing, “i love how everyone is just like “THE WORLDS ENDING.” One YouTube user had a funny line. Nathanial Collier typed, “The ad blockers are getting their revenge.” Anitha Venkannagari simply wrote, “YpouTube won’t show videos.”

Message about the outage posted on the YouTube X page. | Image by X

Areas that are down include most of the east coast of the U.S., south to Florida, Texas, the mid-central States and the west coast. It wouldn’t be an overreaction to say that the whole U.S. is down.

On a Google support page, the company writes: “Hi everyone, We’re aware some of you are having issues accessing YouTube right now. Our teams are aware, and we’ll provide updates as soon as we have them.”