YouTube Is Somewhat Down, Widespread Technical Issue Confirmed [UPDATE: Fixed]
The power of the Internet manifests itself in how most people today consume not only entertainment but even news. From social networks to video streaming, Internet services have become the go-to solutions these days, especially in times of calamities and lockdowns. You can definitely tell how those services have become so ingrained in our lives when people start complaining loudly or even panicking when they go down, like what is currently happening with YouTube.
Multiple users around the world have started asking whether YouTube is down or not. It isn't unusual for some people in some regions to experience brief connectivity problems, sometimes confined to their locality. When it becomes worldwide, though, something starts to look amiss.
Unfortunately, YouTube's Twitter support account confirms what many feared. YouTube isn't down completely but there are almost random errors being experienced by users everywhere. YouTube is already on the case and promises to update the situation.
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.
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020
That was roughly 50 minutes ago as of this writing, which can be an eternity for the Internet-raised generation. There will naturally be some theories on the cause of the outage, from an increase in the number of users stressing the servers to some accidental change pushed to YouTube's backend. This wouldn't be the first time such things have happened and this year saw many of Google's services experience similar problems.
The situation or more precisely the Internet's reaction to such outages is almost telling of the culture we now live in. It not only shows how beholden we've become to such services but it should also push providers to ensure the stability of those services, which sometimes become the only source of news and information during emergencies and calamities.
...And we're back – we're so sorry for the interruption. This is fixed across all devices & YouTube services, thanks for being patient with us ❤️ https://t.co/1s0qbxQqc6
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020
UPDATE: YouTube has now announced that all issues across its devices and services have been fixed. Unsurprisingly, it has no explanation why and we'll just have to shelve it together with the rest of the universe's unsolved mysteries.