List of sites down after massive internet outage impacts X and other sites

Here is a list of the websites which are currently down due to a technical issue with Cloudflare, which has knocked large portions of the internet offline.

Earlier today (18 November), users trying to access websites and social media platforms were met by error messages after a technical issue at Cloudflare, a web infrastructure provider, meant the sites became unavailable.

Cloudflare has since been desperately attempting to get its services online, saying they were aware of an 'internal server error' on its networks.

The company added that they were currently investigating the cause of the issue and are working on 'restoring service for application services customers'.

Meanwhile, internet users looking to access sites such as X, bet365 and more have been met by a message which informs them of an internal server error.

It's a bad day for the staff at Cloudflare (Getty Stock Images)

Which websites have been impacted by the Cloudflare outage?

In its latest update on the situation, Cloudflare said they were 'working on restoring service for application services customers'; however, some users are continuing to report issues with certain platforms (per Downdetector).

At the time of writing, the following websites are not loading for users:

• X
• OpenAI (which includes ChatGPT)
• bet365
• Coinbase
• Archive of our own
• Authy (a two-factor authentication platform)
• Canva
• Spotify
• Letterboxd
• Sage
• Perplexity AI
• IKEA

Several other websites, including Quora, Discord, Grindr, League of Legends, and Google Gemini, have also reported issues earlier in the day.

Sites which users are currently reporting issues with either the website or app (Downdetector)

What is Cloudflare?

Prior to today, most of us are unlikely to have ever heard of Cloudflare, an integral part of the internet which is built to operate silently while we go about our daily browsing.

However, today's debacle will have left several people wondering what Cloudflare actually is and why a technical issue has caused so much disruption.

Put simply, Cloudflare is a web infrastructure provider which hosts numerous websites for users. As well as helping websites load efficiently, The New York Times states that Cloudflare is also responsible for helping sites fight off cyber attacks.

Has this ever happened before?

While it may be the first time most of us have ever heard of the company Cloudflare, it's likely you'll remember the outages at Amazon Web Services (AWS) last month, which caused sites such as Snapchat, MyFitnessPal, Amazon and several more to stop working.

The company later confirmed the mass outage was caused by a bug in the platform's domain name system (DNS) management system, with the issue stemming from an empty DNS record at the platform's US-East-1 data centre region.