YouTube experiences brief outage across the globe

YouTube users around the world on Thursday reported outages that briefly prevented them from accessing content on the popular video-sharing site. Users turned to Twitter to voice their frustration and try to get answers.

“Hey @YouTube@ytcreators my channel is gone for some reason,” one user tweeted. “No videos are showing up on page and creator studio has gone haywire saying there’s no data. What’s going on?”

The brief outage, which appears to have begun around 4 p.m. PT and was apparently resolved about 30 minutes later, affected users on both coasts of the US, Western Europe and parts of Australia.

YouTube, the most popular video platform in the world, has only become more popular during the coronavirus pandemic. As people around the world shelter in place, the Google-owned site has attracted parents on the hunt for children’s content, consumers looking for news, and people just trying to find a distraction during stressful times.

YouTube said at 5 p.m. that the outage was resolved after about 20 minutes.

“If you were experiencing error messages on YouTube, the issue is now fixed,” YouTube said in a tweet. “It lasted for approx ~20 minutes across home, subscriptions, search and more. Thanks for your patience, and for all of your reports!”