The video-sharing platform TikTok and a spate of other apps and sites have all gone down at once, driving a rush of users around the world to vent their rage on Twitter, leaving some to wonder if the internet just broke.
The string of outages came on Wednesday, sending tens of thousands of frustrated users to report a variety of technical problems on Down Detector. Next to TikTok, the affected sites include Pinterest, Spotify, Tinder, Amazon Web Services and Venmo, among others.
Venting their frustration on Twitter, one of the social media platforms still standing (at least for now), many argued that the apps were the only thing keeping them sane while stuck in lockdown, while others were devastated that they would now have to go “interact with actual people.”
Though many chalked the problems up to glitches, some jumped to more extreme conclusions and theories about the multi-site meltdown.
“They probably became sentient and said f**k it,” another user suggested.
With countless people around the globe resorting to social media and digital interaction to cope with loneliness and boredom amid the lockdowns, some suggested that the platforms simply gave way under the load.
While outages are somewhat common on many of the malfunctioning sites and apps and they tend to get resolved within a few hours, it is more rare to see so many go down at once. It remains unclear whether any of the glitches are related, or linked to a common cause.
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