Internet users worldwide were in for a surprise when video streaming service YouTube crashed for close to two hours on Wednesday morning in Manila.
Reports of videos uploaded on the site refusing to play and ‘Error’ messages flashing upon attempts to load the site circulated around 9 a.m. in the Philippines, usually the start of the workday for most office workers.
YouTube’s other services YouTube TV and YouTube Music as well as its mobile app were also reportedly affected during the two-hour disruption.
The site and its app versions were reported operational at around 11 a.m. in Manila, but Google, the company who owns YouTube, has yet to reveal the reason for the crash as of this writing.
Two hours without one of the internet’s biggest sources of entertainment has led internet users to recall the days before the internet age.
Youtube down time…
Kids today: Noooooo!!! 😭😭😭
Kids of the 2000s: not my life! 😊
— Van Christian Ursua (@UrsuaVan) October 17, 2018
When Youtube suddenly stops #YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/83K7wwiFHr
— Ramben Gonzales (@SenpaiRemban) October 17, 2018
youtube is still down. ergo, this introvert will now go outside.#YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/bDQ7TwsI3K
— 𝐜 🖤 (@_chescaelise) October 17, 2018
A promotional graphic posted by Walt Disney Pictures for their upcoming movie “Wreck-It-Ralph 2: Break the Internet” during the crash have led some to speculate that YouTube’s downtime may have just been a promotional stunt by the multi-billion entertainment company.
i think disney deliberately purchased downtime from instagram and youtube as a platform for the wreck it ralph campaign. twitter and fb should be next
— Enzo Zulueta (@enzozulu) October 17, 2018
YouTube has been praised for being among the most stable streaming services with disruptions being rare.
Its broadcasting service YouTubeTV however received numerous complaints in early 2018 when it went down during two major sports events, first during the NBA Eastern conference finals in May and later during the World Cup semi-final match between England and Croatia in July.
The website’s first major worldwide disruption took place in 2008, when the Pakistani government accidentally downed the entire website when it attempted to censor a YouTube channel that uploaded an anti-Islamic video.
While YouTube’s management has yet to reveal if a cyber attack may have been the cause of the crash, social media users have raised cybersecurity concerns following the series of attacks from hackers in the past months.
In October 2018, Google announced that it would be shutting down its social media service Google+ after revealing that it was victim to a data leak that affected around 500,000 accounts.
Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, earlier that month admitted that data belonging to around 50 million users was left exposed after a massive cyber attack.
Users reported being logged out of their accounts or discovering that their accounts had been deactivated without their approval.
