A significant internet outage on Tuesday, 18 November 2025, caused widespread disruption across Nigeria and the globe, taking down major platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, and the betting site Bet365. The problem originated from Cloudflare, a critical internet infrastructure company that provides security and performance services for millions of websites.
What Caused the Widespread Internet Blackout?
The disruption began in the afternoon, with users reporting difficulties accessing their favourite sites and services. The root cause was quickly identified as a technical failure within Cloudflare's network. The company officially acknowledged the problem, stating it was investigating an issue potentially impacting multiple customers.
This incident highlights the fragile nature of the modern internet, where a single point of failure at a core infrastructure provider can have a domino effect on countless unrelated online services. Cloudflare's tools are designed to keep websites safe and online, but when its own network experiences problems, the opposite effect occurs.
Which Popular Services Were Affected?
The outage had a tangible impact on the daily digital lives of many Nigerians. Beyond the major platforms initially reported, tracking site Down Detector noted significant spikes in outage reports for other services, including:
- OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT)
- League of Legends
- Sage accounting software
- Letterboxd
It is noteworthy that Amazon Web Services (AWS), another major cloud provider, was confirmed to be operating normally at the time, isolating the issue specifically to Cloudflare. This event echoes a similar widespread disruption caused by an AWS outage just a month prior, raising concerns about the concentration of critical internet infrastructure.
Ongoing Efforts and User Advice
Throughout the morning and afternoon, Cloudflare provided sporadic updates, indicating a back-and-forth struggle to fully resolve the issue. Some services would temporarily recover, only to become inaccessible again later. The company confirmed that error rates remained higher than normal as their investigation continued.
For affected users, the advice from experts was simple: wait it out. Attempting complex fixes would likely be ineffective for an outage stemming from a central provider. By the latest updates, some stability was returning, with websites gradually coming back online, though Cloudflare had not yet declared the problem completely resolved. This incident serves as a stark reminder of our collective dependence on the unseen architecture of the internet.
