Someone literally broke the internet
So, the internet is kinda broken.
Many of the world's biggest websites including Reddit, Amazon, Twitch, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, PayPal, HBO Max, Hulu, PayPal, even the UK government's website appeared to be experiencing outages on Tuesday morning at around 10:50 a.m. BST / 5:50 a.m. ET.
Users started reporting website issues across numerous platforms on Downdetector simultaneously.
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The problem is reportedly arising from performance issues with Fastly, an American cloud computing services provider. In a service status update at 10:58 a.m. BST, the company said, "We're currently investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services." At 11:57 a.m. BST, Fastly reported, "The issue has been identified and a fix has been applied. Customers may experience increased origin load as global services return."
A Fastly spokesperson responded to Mashable's request for comment: "We identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions across our POPs globally and have disabled that configuration."
They added that Fastly's global network is "coming back online" and that status updates could be viewed on its website.
Major websites failed to load on Tuesday morning, instead appearing emblazoned with error messages, for example, the homepage of The Independent newspaper:
News outlets including the Guardian, The Verge, and others tweeted that their websites were being affected by a "wider internet outage."
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For many, Twitter appeared to still be operational, which was fortunate for those wanting to scream in the void while unable to access their favourite ways to waste time online.
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Get well soon, internet.
This story is developing...
Disclaimer: Downdetector is owned by Mashable’s parent company, J2 Global.
UPDATE: June 8, 2021, 12:09 p.m. BST Added update from Fastly regarding identification of the issue and fix.
UPDATE: June 8, 2021, 12:52 p.m. BST Added statement from Fastly spokesperson.
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
