YouTube down globally: Thousands of users face disruptions, complaints surface online, ‘how am I supposed to eat…’

Alphabet-owned YouTube suffered a widespread global outage on Tuesday night, disrupting access for users across countries, including India, while more than 3.2 lakh complaints were recorded in the United States alone.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, 321,958 incidents were logged in the US as of 8:18 p.m. ET. Earlier in the evening, around 283,490 American users had reported difficulty accessing the platform.

“User reports indicate problems with YouTube TV since 8:13 PM EST,” Downdetector said in a post on X.

YouTube TV recorded 8,923 issue reports, while Google logged 2,694 complaints.

India reports thousands of outages

The disruption was not confined to the US. In India, more than 18,000 users had reported issues by 6:42 a.m. IST.

Downdetector data showed that 71% of affected Indian users faced problems with the app, while 18% reported disruptions in live streaming.

In the US, 56% of complaints were about the app, 21% about the website, and 12% about login issues.

Many users globally reported seeing a “something went wrong” error message when trying to open the app.

The cause of the outage was not immediately known.

YouTube responds as memes flood social media

In a statement, YouTube acknowledged the disruption. “If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this and will follow up here with updates,” the company said.

Google Support added, “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.”

Neither statement clarified what triggered the outage.

As access remained patchy, users in India and abroad turned to X to share memes and reactions, with many asking when the platform would be restored.

(With inputs from Reuters)