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More websites are being reported as having issues this afternoon, with Downdetector spikes for sites including Bet 365, Open AI, Chat GPT, Asda and Grindr, Vinted.
This follows websites including X and Spotify which were hit by a major outage linked to Cloudflare.
Thousands of users reported issues with a host of different websites, including the film review site Letterboxd, which were impacted by technical issues at the internet network services business.
ChatGPT, multiplayer games such as League of Legends and the Scottish Parliament website have also all been impacted.
Mark Patrick, Director of Technical Content at Mouser, commented: “Living in an increasingly cashless society means we’ve traded convenience for vulnerability. When internet outages block access to online banking, people can suddenly find themselves unable to pay for essentials like food, fuel, or travel. It’s a stark reminder that while digital systems make life easier, they also leave us exposed when connectivity fails.”
Mark Patrick added: “Preparing for internet outages is more than just good practice – it’s essential. Running regular simulations helps both businesses and households see how their systems respond when connectivity fails, while educating teams and users ensures everyone knows what to do when things go offline.
“For example, government emergency alerts, like SOS warnings, run independently from the internet. They reach people through broadcast, radio, and mobile network systems separate from online services. Taking these steps turns a potential crisis into a manageable situation.”
Cloudflare operates as a content delivery network and distributed DNS (domain name system). Its services protect website owners from peak loads, comment spam attacks and DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.
In a statement it said: “We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem. More updates to follow shortly.”
Posters on Reddit commented: “just went to downdetector and saw they use a cloudflare bot detection which is also broken…”
Another added: “Oh thank goodness its not just me. Was trying to read some stuff online and suddenly Cloudflare went caput.”
Another poster said: “Yea can’t load X at all, ironically I couldn’t get past the robot detection via cloud flare to get on Downdetector because that site uses cloud flare lol.”
Another said: “X also not working in my region due to cloudflare issue.”
Reports also indicate potential problems at OpenAI, with more than 300 issues reported on Downdetector.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence company based in the United States. It provides users with access to a suite of AI tools and applications, including ChatGPT, Sora, Dall-E, Data Analyst, Web Browser, Writing Coach and many others. Additionally, OpenAI offers the OpenAI API, which provides access to its language models, including GPT.
Downdetector is an online website that allows users of popular services, including X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, Virgin Media and more to report if they are having trouble with the services.
The site only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day.
Describing itself on its website, Downdetector is “where people go when services don’t work.”
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The website monitors disruptions to various key services, including the internet, web hosting platforms, banks, social media and more.
You can see the full methodology and learn more about how Downdetector collects status information and detects problems via its website.
In short, users can get involved by submitting any issue reports on the platform.
Problem indicators are also collected from social media and other factors on the web, Downdetector explained.
The DownDetector monitoring site, which was itself hit by the outage, showed a flurry of reported issues after 11am on Tuesday.
More than 10,000 DownDetector users reported issues related to Cloudflare.
A number of the websites affected, including X, came back online temporarily before suffering further problems.
Users saw a message on a number of the websites saying the issues were caused by an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”.
Cloudflare provides network and security services for many online businesses in order to help their websites and applications operate.
The company said in a server update that it was “experiencing an internal service degradation” and that some service may be intermittently affected.
It added: “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts.”
Cloudflare, which runs services such as checking that visitors to websites are humans rather than bots, says around a fifth of all global websites use some of its services.
Cloudflare had scheduled maintenance for the SCL (Santiago) data centre for Tuesday.
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