A technical issue at Cloudflare caused widespread website disruptions, affecting platforms like X and Letterboxd.
Parts of the internet experienced significant disruptions on Tuesday as a technical problem at Cloudflare affected numerous websites, according to a report from THE INDEPENDENT. Platforms including X, formerly known as Twitter, and film review site Letterboxd displayed error messages indicating the pages could not load.
Cloudflare, a key internet infrastructure provider, offers tools that protect websites from cyber attacks and manage traffic to keep them online. The company acknowledged the outage, stating, “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers. Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available.”
Tracking website Down Detector, which monitors outages, was also impacted by the technical problem but showed a sharp spike in reports once it loaded. Users attempting to access affected sites received a message about an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network” and were advised to “please try again in a few minutes.”
The disruptions began around 11:30 a.m. UK time, though some sites could briefly load when refreshed. Cloudflare posted its first public acknowledgment approximately 15 minutes later.
This incident comes about a month after a similar outage at Amazon Web Services temporarily disrupted large portions of the internet. Cloudflare’s services underpin many online platforms globally, meaning that technical issues can affect seemingly unrelated websites simultaneously.
The company continues to investigate the cause and extent of the disruption.