At around 2:15 p.m. ET, we heard rumblings of several popular websites having issues. Down Detector reports started coming in on sites like Reddit and Pinterest, and some of our editors were even having problems getting Tomsguide.com to load. Shortly after, we found that NYT was having slowdowns and issues.
It seems to be a fairly widespread issue hitting several popular websites and services, though no cause has been revealed yet.
At around 4:10 p.m ET, we saw most websites and services return to normal, with user reports reaching their baseline. We haven't heard what caused the sporadic outages, but we'll continue to investigate.
After the initial burst of reports, we found issues with sites like Etsy, Spotify, Twitch and more had a spike in outage reports. From there, we saw reports pouring in for CNN, Fandom, Target, and Github.
It's unclear at this point what is happening with these popular websites and services, but we will continue to monitor the situation (while our own website is actually working, at least).
In my testing, I haven't had any problems accessing Reddit or any other listed sites (Tom's Guide included), but something is happening based on the number of outage reports.
As the outage goes on, it's becoming more apparent that this is an intermittent issue that doesn't always impact all users. I still have no problems accessing Reddit and NYT, while some colleagues can't access many major websites.
Since the issues started, we've seen the first notable downturn in the amount of Reddit outage reports. What started with the graph spiking heavily in an upward trend has slowly begun to decrease, which could mean whatever issue was taking over the internet is slowing down.
Reports of outages at Pinterest have dropped to almost zero in the last few minutes, indicating that things have stabilized there. According to the company's status page, everything is up and running as usual. In fact, July 8 shows "No incidents reported today," so it appears that whatever was happening was short-lived, at least for Pinterest.
For the other sites like Spotify, Reddit and NYT, reports are still coming in, though they've slowed down substantially.
Interestingly, some members of the Tom's Guide team are reporting that they can't load some of the affected websites from their computer on their home network but they're working fine from their phone when connected to cellular.
There doesn't appear to be much logic behind the outages. For some (like me) everything works perfectly fine. For others, it works from one type of connection and not another.
We started to see a noticeable downturn in the number of reports on some websites, but that seems to have shifted, with The New York Times seeing a sharp increase in down reports again.
Clearly, this is an inconsistent issue spreading around the internet. At the same time As NYT is seeing an increase, Reddit's reports are continuing to go down and Twitch's user issues remain steady. For its part, Reddit's status page says its "experiencing an elevated level of API errors and are currently looking into the issue." What's more interesting is that only the desktop web version of Reddit showing issues on the company's website.
Lord the internet down.July 8, 2024
Users are starting to take to social media to complain about a general internet outage, with some even saying the whole internet is down for them.
Is the internet down for some peopleJuly 8, 2024
Some users are reaching out to see if others are suffering from the same problems, and based on the reports, we're seeing a drop in some and a rise in others. For example, now Call of Duty and Ticketmaster are seeing huge increases in outage reports, while Reddit and The New York Times are decreasing.
We've seen some X posts speculating that the weather situation in Texas could be somehow related to the intermittent outages, but we haven't received official confirmation from any affected companies.
🚨🇺🇸HURRICANE BERYL DISRUPTS INTERNET AND CELL SERVICE IN HOUSTONMany Houston residents are struggling with internet and cell signal issues due to Hurricane Beryl.NetBlocks reports connectivity is down to 30% in Houston, leaving over 2 million without power.AT&T and Xfinity… pic.twitter.com/LJOTon6E3AJuly 8, 2024
Reddit updated its status page with a note changing to status to "Monitoring." The company says, "A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results."
With user reports for Reddit going down to almost zero, it appears the fix is working as intended. The same holds true for Spotify, NYTimes, Twitch, CNN, Target, and several other websites that were having problems.
Call of Duty and Ticketmaster problems are still on the rise, though. Call of Duty's baseline number of reports is 13 and it's currently at 542, which is a sizable increase. However, Activision's status page shows "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III" and "Call of Duty: Warzone" as online on all platforms, so the issue has aparently not its made way to company yet.
It looks like the weird internet outage might be coming to a close, as reports on Reddit, Twitch, NYTimes, and other have reached their baseline. The later outages with Call of Duty and Ticketmaster are also nearing their baseline report levels, indicating that the hiccup could be over.
For Call of Duty, the baseline is 13 and the current reports are sitting at around 70. For Ticketmaster, the baseline is two and it's hanging steady at 34. We expect both services to be at their baseline soon. As always, we will continue to monitor the situation and investigate to discover what caused the outages.
