A significant global internet disruption paralyzed numerous online services on Tuesday, November 19, 2025, leaving millions of users worldwide unable to access popular platforms including X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT.
What Caused the Widespread Internet Problems
The massive outage originated from Cloudflare, a crucial internet infrastructure company that provides content delivery and security services for approximately one-third of all global internet traffic. The technical problems began at 9 a.m. WAT and persisted for several hours, affecting websites and applications that depend on Cloudflare's network.
Users attempting to access affected services encountered HTTP 500 errors and messages indicating an "internal server error on Cloudflare's network." The company advised frustrated users to "please try again in a few minutes" while their technical team worked to resolve the issue.
Services and Platforms Affected by the Outage
The disruption had far-reaching consequences across multiple sectors. Beyond social media platforms like X, the outage impacted:
- Artificial intelligence services including ChatGPT and other OpenAI products
- Banking and financial platforms
- Healthcare systems and logistics operations
- Government services including electronic visa applications
Even Website Down Detector, which typically monitors outage reports, experienced technical difficulties during the incident. When the service became accessible again, it showed a dramatic spike in reported problems across global internet services.
Broader Implications for Internet Infrastructure
Technology experts have highlighted that this incident, following recent outages at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, underscores the internet's heavy reliance on a few core infrastructure providers. Many consider this dependence potentially fragile, as demonstrated by Tuesday's widespread disruption.
The outage had real-world consequences, particularly for travelers who reported being unable to complete or check their electronic visa applications, effectively paralyzing administrative travel procedures during the outage period.
Cloudflare confirmed it was investigating the issue, which impacted multiple customers including its own Dashboard and API. The company stated late Tuesday that a fix had been implemented and that services would return gradually. However, Cloudflare cautioned that "customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates" as remediation efforts continue and all services are brought back to normal operation.
