A surprising number of popular social media platforms, various editing tools and more – X (formerly known as Twitter), Canva, OpenAI services, Cloudflare-backed apps and many platforms faced outages on Tuesday, as reported by thousands of users. The outage started at around 5 PM IST, when a huge number of users reported the event. Downdetector itself went down after a while, leaving people confused about what exactly was happening across various platforms.
When multiple major platforms stopped responding to several users, it was clear that the reason was usually bigger than a normal app glitch. Here’s what actually could have caused such massive outages, what could be the true reason for it, and what a user can do at home when an important app goes down.
Why so many apps/platforms/websites stopped working?
When X, Canva, Cloudflare-based sites, OpenAI tools and other services fail to load their home page, refresh and respond at the same time, it usually hints at a single point of failure in the internet infrastructure, which is considerably larger than a small bug. Here’s what we know so far:
1. Cloudflare Outage or CDN Failure
Many websites rely on Cloudflare for security, network routing, protection against attacks, and faster loading. If Cloudflare has even a small technical issue, thousands of sites depending on it can stop working instantly.
This is the most likely cause when multiple global apps fail at once.
2. Global DNS or routing issue
DNS (Domain Name System) can be considered as the ‘phonebook of the internet’.
If DNS breaks, websites do not load, apps fail to connect and login pages stop responding.
These issues can come from either:
- Cloudflare DNS
- Google DNS
- ISP-level DNS
- BGP routing problems (internet traffic pathways breaking)
3. Cloud Server Breakdown (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure)
Platforms like Canva, OpenAI and many others run on large cloud servers; for them not to be working could be a major cloud region error, which caused websites to freeze, AI tools to stop loading and apps to fail to respond for millions.
4. Massive traffic spike
Another major and common reason for websites that stop responding is that too many people try to access a platform at once. This may put an immense load on the servers, and the platform might crash.
5. Software update gone wrong
A new backend update might create bugs that cause login issues, posting failures and loading errors for the users.
Why even did Downdetector go down?
Downdetector depends heavily on Cloudflare, real-time traffic monitoring and external APIs. If the backbone systems are down, even outage-reporting platforms become unreachable, which is why users saw blank pages or errors today.
How to fix these issues at home?
Even when the global issue is not in your control, you can still try some basic hygiene by following these steps to check if the problem is at your end or not.
- Switch internet source: Try to switch the mobile data, Wi-Fi, hotspot and another ISP. Sometimes, one network may not reach the affected servers.
- Restart the app or browser: It might be a temporary connection error, and you can give a break to your machine; just restart.
- Clear Cache (Android), delete history on laptop/PCs or offload app (iPhone): Very common concern, but corrupt cached data can block an app from loading.
- Change DNS manually: This often fixes connectivity issues. Use the following:
- Google DNS: 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4
- Cloudflare DNS: 1.1.1.1
- Disable VPN: A VPN can break the routing path to the application, website and more.
- Try the web version if the app fails: Sometimes the apps which are not working and claim to be down might start working if you operate them from the browser version.
- Restart your device: This is the most basic of all the issues – it just solves hidden system conflicts.