A massive internet outage has struck the digital world today, November 18, 2025, as web infrastructure giant Cloudflare struggles with a critical system-wide failure. The disruption has taken down a significant portion of the internet, rendering major platforms like X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Canva, and Discord inaccessible to millions of users worldwide.
Cloudflare, which provides content delivery network (CDN) and security services to a vast number of the world’s websites, confirmed the incident on its status page. The company stated it is “aware of, and investigating” a “major issue affecting its Global Network.” Engineers noted the problem is causing widespread “500 internal server errors,” effectively severing the connection between websites and their visitors.
The scale of the blackout is extensive. X users attempting to access their timelines are met with empty screens or “posts aren’t loading” error messages. Similarly, users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI tools are unable to log in or generate queries. The outage is so severe that even Downdetector, the go-to site for tracking internet failures, briefly went offline itself, as it also relies on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
Reports indicate the issues began spiking around 11:00 AM GMT (6:00 AM ET), with complaints flooding in from the United States, Europe, and Asia. Network analysts estimate that because Cloudflare powers a substantial percentage of the web, the ripple effects are impacting thousands of services, including banking apps, gaming servers like League of Legends, and e-commerce storefronts.
“We are dealing with a major incident,” a Cloudflare spokesperson updated briefly. “The issue impacts multiple customers, including the Cloudflare Dashboard and API, which are also failing.”
This event underscores the fragility of the centralized internet, where a single point of failure at a backbone provider like Cloudflare can trigger a global digital blackout. As of this report, engineers are scrambling to reroute traffic and mitigate the failure, but there is currently no estimated time for a full recovery.
Footage Charlie Kirk has been shot
Charlie Kirk has been shot
