Tuesday morning, November 18, 2025, started with a massive internet disruption. A widespread failure struck Cloudflare, the essential provider of web performance and security. The outage began around 11:20 UTC (12:20 p.m. WAT).
Millions experienced immediate issues. Thousands of users reported failures with high-profile platforms worldwide. Major casualties included X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, and even key Nigerian news outlets like The Nation and Punch. Error messages instantly flooded screens globally.
Timeline of the Breakdown
Problems started shortly after 11:30 GMT (12:30 p.m. WAT). Users began encountering “Error 522” or “500” messages. These indicated core internal server failures. Cloudflare’s status page confirmed the cause: a “spike in unusual traffic” directed at one of its foundational services. This immediately resulted in widespread errors across its entire global network.
By 13:13 UTC (2:13 p.m. WAT), the company announced partial restoration for some services, such as Access and WARP. However, issues affecting the core dashboard and API functions persisted. While full resolution was pending, some visitors saw prompts asking them to unblock specific Cloudflare challenge domains to proceed.
Top Sites Hit Hard
Cloudflare provides backend support for approximately 20% of all websites, making the impact extensive:
- X (Twitter): Feeds froze entirely. Internal server errors prevented logins and the posting of new content. Reports of failure peaked at over 9,000 on the status monitoring site Downdetector.
- ChatGPT: OpenAI’s flagship AI tool displayed frustrating CAPTCHA loops and failed to load. Users were left stranded mid-conversation.
- Spotify: Music streaming was halted, with reports of global app crashes.
- Nigerian News: Punch Newspaper (punchng.com) and The Nation Newspaper (thenationonlineng.net) both showed Cloudflare error messages. Access to breaking political and business stories was blocked during peak reading hours.
- Other Victims: The outage also affected services like Canva, Grindr, and various crypto trackers. Even the monitoring site Downdetector struggled to handle the influx of users checking statuses.
The Problem: A Single Point of Failure
Cloudflare is responsible for managing everything from traffic routing to bot protection for millions of online assets. The company confirmed the event stemmed from an “internal service degradation.” Crucially, the issue was an infrastructure glitch, not a hacker attack or a system overload.
One expert called the incident a “catastrophic disruption.” They noted that the intense global reliance on backbone providers like Cloudflare makes the modern web vulnerable to such single-point failures. This event echoes recent chaos where giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure caused similar widespread outages.
The reliance on these few fragile networks means there are few alternatives when an issue occurs, quickly turning a single company’s hiccup into a global headache.
Recovery Underway
Cloudflare activated an “all hands on deck” protocol. Teams deployed fixes that began restoring some services by early afternoon UTC. Error rates dropped significantly, and major sites like X started slowly flickering back online.
For Nigerian users, the timing amplified the frustration. The blackout silenced key sources of local politics and economic updates precisely when reliable digital information was most needed. With growing reliance on the internet, such blackouts severely disrupt daily routines.
As fixes continue, the event serves as a stark reminder: the power of the centralized internet is simultaneously its greatest weakness. Teams are working fast to get the digital world operational again.
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