2018 YouTube Outage

Overview

The 2018 YouTube Outage refers to a major global outage for the video sharing platform YouTube that occurred in mid-October 2018. During the incident, memes referencing the outrage were widely circulated within internet culture communities on Reddit, and conspiracy theories surged in Spanish-speaking communities on Facebook and Youtube.

Background

At approximately 9p.m. EST on October 16th, 2018, YouTube suffered a global outage for nearly two hours displaying either a blank grid on the homepage (shown below, left) or an error message (shown below, right).^[1]

Developments

Online Reaction

Nearly one hour after the outage, YouTuber Marques Brownlee tweeted that this was the longest amount of time he had seen the platform down (shown below).^[2] The tweet received more than 25.6k likes and 2k retweets.

That evening, a post was stickied to /r/videos^[3] announcing that YouTube was down, which gained more than 46,800 points (81% upvoted) and 5,100 comments over the next 16 hours. On the subreddit /r/youtube, user u/ATMA made a post asking if the platform was working correctly for anyone else^[4], which gained over 30,200 points (85% upvoted) and over 6,200 comments. Meanwhile, image macros and |photoshop edits referencing the outage reached the front page of the /r/dankmemes and /r/memeeconomy subreddits (shown below).

Also on October 16th, YouTuber Chris Ray Gun tweeted a Ditty video mocking the incident (shown below).^[5]

YouTube's Response

Following the outage, the @TeamYouTube Twitter feed announced that the "widespread issue" was resolved (shown below).^[6]

Conspiracy theories

During and after the global Youtube outage, many conspiracy theories were widely shared among Internet users mainly of the Spanish-speaking community. The coincidence of the event and a variety rumors and obscure videos shared that day led to the premature conclusion that the platform was taken down on purpose to cover the leakage of compromising content.

The most widespread theory involved the upload of alleged footage of a reptilian, either being captured or undergoing a transformation, which started trending minutes before the outage. One of the most shared clips showed distorted footage of a man’s body covered in mud or feces, which got 20,000 views on Facebook (sample shown below, top left). One particular video shared under the name "(Dreamer Heaven Level's) 1. Rain's Demise of Reptile” (sample shown below, top right)^[7] gained attention in later months due to its association with Worldcorp Enterprise and its probable origin being a snuff pedophilia site.^[8][9] After the outage, obscure clips with a similar name continued being uploaded to the platform (shown below, bottom left) and social media, many of which, however, were bait-and-switch videos in disguise (example shown below, bottom right).

Another common theory was about an alleged leaked footage of a "pedophilic ritual" carried on by politicians and well-known personalities, reason for which “the FBI released an HIV cure as a smokescreen".^[10] A thread about blackmail tapes started on roughly one hour after at 10:20 p.m. EST, on 4chan’s /x/ (paranormal) board (shown below, left)^[11] was often referenced as proof by along a picture of unknown source portraying former US president Barack Obama wearing a silver robe, mask and horns (shown below, right).^[12]

Other hypotheses involved unusual light sightings on the sky (shown below), leaked footage of objects hitting the moon and UFO sightings.^[10][12]

After the event, many Spanish-speaking Youtubers reported on the event. For example, The next day, on October 17th, Youtuber gRUNgerOFICIAL uploaded a video reporting on the multiple theories and gained over 3 million views and 51,000 likes.^[12] On the other hand, many users remained skeptic about them. Also on October 17th, Youtuber DrossRotzank mocked many of the rumors about the about outage during a livestream on the YouNow. After its reupload on Youtube the video gained over 1.3 million views and 76,000.^[13]

Search Interest

Search queries for both "youtube outage" and "caida youtube" spike during October 2018, with "caida youtube" showing more search interest to a small degree probably. This is probably due to interest on conspiracy theories in latinamerican countries since search interest for the term "reptiliano" almost doubling search interest on the outage itself in those regions.^[14]

External References