Some of you may have noticed, some of you may have not, YouTube went down yesterday. This reporting is unusual. Numerous times when something less consequential goes down, tech blogs blow their sites up with news about it. Like when Spotify and Zoom went down last year. Yet, a site that billions check out everyday barely got any mention. In any case, I noticed and for a minute I thought it was just me.
Yesterday, was one of those days that things kept happening to me. The machine I used at the market wouldn’t take my dimes. Had to hard reset my router because it wouldn’t allow my phone onto the network. Kept dropping shit. To top it all off, I couldn’t access YouTube. Like not at all. I didn’t get that log in screen when you use the TV app. So I checked my phone and got an error message.
Finally, I decided to check downdetector and saw a slew of comments within the last few seconds complaining. After looking around, it wasn’t a simple spot outage. According to Engadget, it was users across the world like “United States, with users in other countries like Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia and Russia also having problems with accessing the website.”
YouTube Outage Didn’t End the World
Around 9 PM EST, YouTube acknowledged there was an issue. That was around the time I discovered the issue. My cousin was cussing in the other room because he couldn’t get on. Like me, he initially thought it was an internet issue. I comforted him as long as I could. By 10 PM EST, YouTube claimed that the site had been restored, which it was for me. Some still said they had issues.
It was interesting that few people I knew even noticed it. Some thought that the orange clown was throwing a tantrum regarding the site. Others were too busy on Peacock watching 24-hour Olympic coverage. As for me, I went back on Netflix and saw my favorite ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, June 17th, 1994. It is a great one. No talking heads, just a narrative told through news footage of the day.
It was funny how not many people spoke about it on social media. I’ve seen more responses when Netflix goes down. I guess when the most active site on the internet goes down, the world doesn’t end.