Major Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Popular Online Platforms
If you found yourself staring at frustrating error messages on your favourite websites and apps on the afternoon of November 18, 2025, you were not alone. A significant technical failure at Cloudflare, a critical infrastructure company, triggered a widespread outage affecting a multitude of popular online services, including X, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Company Confirms Widespread Technical Issue
The problem came to light when users across India and the globe began reporting a surge of widespread 500 errors while trying to access various digital platforms. Cloudflare swiftly acknowledged the issue on its official status page. The company confirmed it was investigating a technical issue impacting multiple customers. In a statement, they noted that the problems were not limited to customer websites but also affected their own Cloudflare Dashboard and API, which were failing. The company assured users that it was working to understand the full scope of the problem and to mitigate its impact, promising more updates shortly.
Impact Felt Across Social Media and AI Platforms
The ripple effect of the Cloudflare outage was immediate and far-reaching. Users of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) encountered difficulties loading their feeds. Similarly, AI-powered services like Google's Gemini and the AI search engine Perplexity were rendered inaccessible for many, displaying error messages linked to Cloudflare. This incident highlights the immense dependency of the modern internet on a handful of core infrastructure providers. When a key player like Cloudflare experiences a disruption, it can bring a significant portion of the digital ecosystem to a standstill, demonstrating the fragility of our interconnected online world.
