Cloudflare Outage Triggers Global Disruption: ChatGPT, X (Twitter), Downdetector Hit; Users Flood Social Media With Reactions
A major Cloudflare outage disrupted global internet services, taking down ChatGPT, X (Twitter), Downdetector and more. Cloudflare confirms partial restoration as users react online.
Users report widespread service failures as a major Cloudflare outage takes down ChatGPT, X (Twitter), Downdetector and other platforms worldwide.
A massive Cloudflare outage on Tuesday evening caused widespread disruption across the internet, knocking several major platforms offline — including ChatGPT, X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI services and even outage-tracking portal Downdetector.
The incident, coming just weeks after a major AWS failure, once again underscored the fragility of global digital infrastructure.
What happened?
Reports of service failures began surfacing around 5:20 PM IST, with monitoring agencies confirming that Cloudflare — a key provider of CDN services and DDoS protection for millions of websites — was experiencing a large-scale system issue. In a cascading effect, Downdetector itself also went down shortly after users tried to check which platforms were affected.
Cloudflare’s status page quickly acknowledged the disruption, stating that multiple customers were encountering widespread 500 errors along with failures in the Cloudflare Dashboard and API.
“Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue that impacts multiple customers. We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem,” the company said.
Services begin to recover — but not everywhere
In an evening update, Cloudflare confirmed that the root cause had been identified and fixed with a software patch. As a result, platforms such as X (Twitter) and some other services began returning online in several regions, though issues persisted globally.
“We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover… We have re-enabled WARP access in London,” the company added, noting that recovery efforts for application services remain ongoing.
Netizens react
Users bombarded their respective social media platforms with memes, worries, and real-time news about the sudden loss of Internet service. Many could not bring themselves to believe that Cloudflare and Downdetector, which is regarded as the primary website regarding tracking outages, went offline simultaneously.
