Advertising
From Pink Slips to Silent Sidelining: Inside adland’s layoff and anxiety crisis
YouTube down: Major outage affects millions of users
The company’s support account, Team YouTube, has been responding to user complaints on X (formerly Twitter).
YouTube's support account, Team YouTube, has been responding to user complaints on X (formerly Twitter).
Google’s YouTube platform experienced a major outage on Wednesday afternoon, disrupting access for hundreds of thousands of users across the United States.
According to outage tracker DownDetector, more than 203,000 users reported being unable to use YouTube’s video service. The disruption extended to the company’s other streaming products, including YouTube Music and YouTube TV, which recorded over 4,800 and 2,300 outage reports respectively.
Data from DownDetector indicated that 54% of users faced issues specifically with video and music streaming. The platform’s outage map showed that major US cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, New York, Washington DC, and Detroit were among the worst affected.
While YouTube has not yet issued an official statement regarding the cause of the disruption, the company’s support account, Team YouTube, has been responding to user complaints on X (formerly Twitter). However, no explanation has been provided so far about the potential source of the outage.
If you’re not able to play videos on YouTube right now – we’re on it! Thanks for your patience, and you can follow along here for updates: https://t.co/EcPxm09f77
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 16, 2025
Speculation online suggested the possibility of a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, but there is currently no confirmation from Google or YouTube to support these claims.
As of publication, YouTube’s services appear to remain unstable for several users, though some have reported gradual restoration of functionality.
SPOTLIGHT
From purpose-driven work and narrative-rich brand films to AI-enabled ideas and creator-led collaborations, the awards reflect the full spectrum of modern creativity.
Read More“Confusion creates opportunity for agile players,” Sir Martin Sorrell on industry consolidation
Looking ahead to the close of 2025 and into 2026, Sorrell sees technology platforms as the clear winners. He described them as “nation states in their own right”, with market capitalisations that exceed the GDPs of many countries.