It started like any other Tuesday morning, on November 18, 2025, a major outage at Cloudflare, the internet’s key security and performance provider – caused widespread disruptions starting around 11:20 UTC (12:20 p.m. WAT).
Thousands of users reported issues with high-profile sites like X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, and even Nigerian news giants Punch and The Nation, as error messages flooded screens worldwide.
Timeline of the Breakdown
The problems kicked off shortly after 11:30 GMT (12:30 p.m. WAT), with users hitting “Error 522” or “500” messages, signs of internal server failures. Cloudflare’s status page confirmed a “spike in unusual traffic” to one of its core services, leading to widespread errors across its global network.
By 13:13 UTC (2:13 p.m. WAT), the company announced partial recovery for services like Access and WARP, but dashboard and API issues lingered. Full fixes were still underway, with some users seeing “please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed” prompts on affected sites.
Sites Hit Hard: From Social Media to Local News
Cloudflare powers about 20% of all websites, so the impact was massive. Here’s a snapshot of major casualties:
- X (Twitter): Feeds froze, with internal server errors blocking logins and posts. Reports peaked at over 9,000 on Downdetector (itself down at times).
- ChatGPT: OpenAI’s AI tool showed CAPTCHA loops and loading failures, frustrating users mid-conversation.
- Spotify: Streaming halted, app crashes reported globally.
- Punch Newspaper (punchng.com): Nigeria’s top daily displayed Cloudflare errors, blocking access to breaking news and opinion pieces during peak hours.
- The Nation Newspaper (thenationonlineng.net): Readers faced similar blocks, with the site showing “internal server error” messages, halting traffic on politics and business stories.
Other victims included Canva, Grindr, and crypto trackers like DeFiLlama. Even Downdetector struggled to load as users flocked to check statuses.
What Went Wrong? A Single Point of Failure
Cloudflare handles everything from bot protection to traffic routing for millions of sites. This outage stemmed from an “internal service degradation” – not a hack or overload, but a glitch in its core infrastructure.
NetBlocks director Alp Toker called it a “catastrophic disruption,” noting how reliance on providers like Cloudflare has made the web vulnerable to these single-point failures.
It echoes recent chaos: Amazon Web Services (AWS) took down over 1,000 sites last month, and Microsoft Azure followed suit. Cybersecurity expert Jake Moore from ESET warned: “These fragile networks leave companies with few alternatives, turning one outage into a global headache.”
Recovery Underway – What Users Can Do
Cloudflare’s team went “all hands on deck,” deploying fixes that restored some services by early afternoon UTC. Error rates dropped, and sites like X began flickering back online.
If you’re still stuck:
- Switch to mobile data or a VPN.
- Clear your browser cache and cookies.
- Wait 10-15 minutes and retry.
Why This Hits Home in Nigeria and Beyond
For Nigerian users, the downtime amplified frustration during a busy news day Punch and The Nation, key sources for local politics and economy updates, went dark when many needed them most.
With internet penetration at 55% and growing reliance on digital news, these blackouts disrupt daily life, from streaming to staying informed.
As fixes roll out, this serves as a reminder: the internet’s strength is also its weakness. One company’s hiccup can silence millions but teams are working fast to get us back online.
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