#YouTube videos won’t play right now, and maybe that’s for the best

Everyone’s second-favorite radicalization engine came crashing to a halt late Wednesday afternoon as YouTube videos refused to play. The website itself loads just fine, but videos only display error messages when users attempt to play them. 

According to DownDetector, which is owned by Mashable parent company Ziff Davis, reports of problems with YouTube started pouring in around 3:44 p.m. PT.

“If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix,” explained a YouTube spokesperson. “We’ll follow up here [on Twitter] with any updates.”

As of the time of this writing, the DownDetector outage map shows YouTube’s problems are concentrated in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. So, in other words, pretty much all over the place.

We reached out to Google, which owns YouTube, to ask what caused the outage and when it expects service to be restored. In response, a company spokesperson merely pointed us toward the above tweet.  

In the meantime, just know that YouTube appreciates your patience. 

Oh, and that your favorite misinformation will probably still be there waiting for you when YouTube comes back online.