On Friday, December 5, a significant portion of the global internet ground to a halt. A major outage at Cloudflare, a key web infrastructure and security provider, caused widespread disruptions across thousands of websites and applications.
From social media giants to essential productivity tools, the crash highlighted just how dependent the modern web is on a few key players.
Confirmed: The List of Affected Services
The incident did not just affect small websites; it took down some of the biggest names on the internet. Users reported inability to access social platforms, streaming news, and even online shopping sites.
Here is the breakdown of the major services confirmed to be affected during the outage:
| Service Category | Affected Platforms |
| Social Media | X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn |
| Productivity & Design | Canva, Zoom |
| E-commerce & Retail | Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, H&M |
| Financial Services | Trading platforms (Groww, Zerodha) |
| News & Monitoring | BBC, Politico, Axios, Downdetector |
Ironically, Downdetector, the go-to site for checking if other websites are down, was itself inaccessible for many users, as it relies on Cloudflare’s network.
Cloudflare’s Response: Fix Deployed
Cloudflare acknowledged the issue quickly. Within approximately 20 minutes of the initial reports, the company identified the root cause and began implementing a solution.
According to their official status update, a fix was deployed by 9:12 UTC on December 5. The engineering team stated that systems were transitioning to a “monitoring mode” to ensure stability as traffic levels returned to normal across the globe.
Why Does This Keep Happening?
These recurring outages expose a critical vulnerability in the architecture of the internet. When a central infrastructure provider like Cloudflare experiences a technical failure, it triggers a domino effect.
Businesses, media outlets (like the BBC), and social platforms (like X) rely on these third-party providers for speed and security. Consequently, a single point of failure can disconnect millions of users instantly. Today’s incident served as a stark reminder that even the biggest tech giants are not immune to infrastructure collapse.
