YouTube, the world’s largest video platform, recently experienced an outage that caused the homepage and recommendations to go down for millions of users. The company has fixed the outage within a few hours.
A recent technical glitch on YouTube, the world’s largest video platform, left millions of users stranded for several hours. On Wednesday morning, users in several countries, including India, suddenly complained that videos were not showing on the homepage, recommendations were missing, and the app was not loading properly. Some even encountered error messages like “Something went wrong” or “Come back later.” The outage quickly trended on social media, leaving users confused as to what had happened.
According to Downdetector, a website that tracks website outages, more than 300,000 reports were filed during peak hours. Reports indicate that the number of complaints peaked around 7 a.m. in India. Users in the US, India, the UK, and other countries were also affected. However, reports declined after a few hours, indicating that the problem was gradually being resolved.
The company issued an official statement.
YouTube later clarified on its official help page that the issue was caused by a glitch in its recommendation system. This system recommends videos on the homepage based on users’ preferences and viewing history, creates the ‘Up Next’ section, and displays content across platforms. Due to the technical issue, videos were not visible on various platforms, including the website, mobile app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids. However, this was not a complete server shutdown, as in some cases, videos were still playing from direct links.
YouTube is now working properly.
In a statement, the company stated that the issue with the recommendation system has now been completely resolved, and all platforms are functioning normally. Currently, the service has been fully restored, and users are able to watch videos as before. If you’re still experiencing any issues, refreshing the website or closing and reopening the app should fix it. Users can also report such issues directly on the platform.
It’s worth noting that the microblogging platform X recently went down for a while. Platforms affiliated with Meta and Google also occasionally go down due to server changes or glitches, but these are quickly fixed, ensuring that fewer users are affected by such outages.
