Why was YouTube down worldwide? Google reveals what triggered the massive outage

YouTube faced a major global outage on Tuesday, affecting users in several countries, including India and the United States. Hundreds of thousands of users reported difficulties loading videos and accessing related services. Many encountered error messages, videos not playing, or repeated “something went wrong” notifications while using the YouTube app and website.

Google responded early through TeamYouTube, stating: “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.”

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Recommendations system glitch identified

Later, YouTube’s help page clarified the cause of the disruption, saying that "an issue with our recommendations system prevented videos from appearing across surfaces on YouTube (including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids)." The company added, "The homepage is back, but we're still working on a full fix."

Outage tracking website Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in complaints worldwide. In the United States, more than 320,000 users reported problems at the peak of the outage. In India, over 19,000 complaints were logged within minutes during the morning hours, indicating that the disruption was global rather than limited to a specific region.

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YouTube TV and some other Google services also saw increased complaint levels during the same period, suggesting a broader platform-side issue. Downdetector gathers data from user-submitted reports and other signals, so the figures may not reflect the total number of affected users but instead provide a strong indicator of the scale of disruption. Meanwhile, social media platforms were flooded with posts from users across different regions reporting simultaneous access failures.