YouTube videos are not playing right now, and maybe that’s for the best

What are Flat Earthers going to do in the world?

Everyone’s second favorite radicalization engine was stopped Wednesday afternoon when YouTube videos refused to play. The website itself loads fine, but the videos only show error messages when users try to play them.

According to DownDetector, which is owned by Mashable’s parent company, Ziff Davis, reports of problems with YouTube started arriving around 3:44 p.m. PST.

“If you are having trouble viewing YouTube videos right now, you are not alone; our team is aware of the problem and is working to fix it.” explained a YouTube spokesperson. “We will still be here [on Twitter] with updates “.

At the time of writing, DownDetector’s outage map shows that YouTube’s problems are concentrated in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. So, in other words, pretty much everywhere.

We reached out to Google, the owner of YouTube, to ask what caused the outage and when they expect service to be restored. In response, a company spokesperson simply pointed us to the above tweet.

In the meantime, you should know that YouTube appreciates your patience.

Oh, and that your favorite misinformation will probably still be there waiting for you when YouTube is back online.

UPDATE: Nov 11, 2020 5:41 pm PST: YouTube appears to be up and running again, but as of this update, there is still no official news from the @TeamYouTube Twitter account.

UPDATE: November 12, 2020, 1:17 pm AEDT YouTube’s Twitter account has now confirmed that the site is supported on all devices, so you can resume streaming your K-pop videos.