Thousands of internet users around the world faced difficulties accessing popular platforms including X, ChatGPT, Canva, and Grindr on Tuesday after an outage at web-infrastructure company Cloudflare.
Cloudflare, which manages roughly one-fifth of global web traffic, said it began investigating an internal service degradation at around 6:40 a.m. ET. The company confirmed that a fix has been deployed, though some customers may continue to experience intermittent issues as services recover.
The disruption prompted a surge in reports on outage-monitoring site Downdetector, with nearly 5,000 users flagging problems at the peak. By 8 a.m. ET, the number of reports had fallen to about 600. Downdetector collects data from user-submitted status updates, meaning the total number of affected users may be higher than reported.
Cloudflare said in a statement, “We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare’s network to experience errors. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors.”
Platforms affected by the outage, such as X and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, had not responded to requests for comment at the time of reporting. Users of these services reported error messages and inability to load sites during the disruption.
The incident adds to a series of recent disruptions affecting global internet services. Microsoft Azure experienced technical issues last month, and an outage at Amazon Web Services in October affected thousands of websites and apps, including widely used platforms like Snapchat and Reddit.
Experts note that large-scale outages at infrastructure providers can have widespread effects because so many websites and online services rely on these networks to function. Cloudflare provides content delivery and security services for millions of websites, helping manage traffic, prevent downtime, and protect against cyberattacks.
The company did not provide a specific cause for the spike in unusual traffic but confirmed that teams were working to ensure all services are restored. Users were advised that some errors might persist during the remediation process.
Cloudflare’s widespread network makes it a critical component of the internet, meaning disruptions at the firm can ripple across multiple platforms and regions. The company has faced scrutiny in the past for the impact of outages on global online services, underscoring how dependent major websites are on a small number of infrastructure providers.
Tuesday’s outage highlights the vulnerability of internet services to technical disruptions at key infrastructure firms and the potential for widespread effects on users and businesses reliant on online platforms.
