Movies

YouTube is down and the Internet goes crazy [UPDATE: It's back]

By JC Torres/

It wasn't just the PlayStation Network that abruptly went offline for a short while. Now an even bigger network outage is affecting users all over the world, not just a few thousand who own specific devices. Yes, YouTube is down. I repeat, YouTube is down. And as with any Internet service that the entire world has come to rely on, the Web is on fire with reports and complaints about how people now have to pry their eyes away from their screens. Or at least start using other social media apps.

Outages aren't exactly new and even Google isn't safe from those. There are, however, a few services that have become so essential to modern life that their unannounced absence sends ripples that can be felt throughout the entire world, like a million voices crying out and then suddenly going silent.

Dozens if not hundreds of reports have probably flooded YouTube's support lines after users discovered they couldn't access their favorite Internet video streaming site. It isn't just the main YouTube service either. The outage seems to have affected both YouTube TV and YouTube Music as well.

YouTube has acknowledged the issue but has no update yet on the matter. In other words, it's still not fixed as of this writing and you still can't watch your favorite cat videos. Of course, YouTube has grown to be much more than just an entertainment hub, with people's livelihood reliant on the service. So yes, there is reason to go crazy over YouTube going down.

UPDATE: That didn't take long, which is a good thing. YouTube is back up though without any word on what caused the outage, unsurprisingly. It might be the talk on the Web and the source of some conspiracy theories but, at least for now, all is well again on the Internet.

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