A massive wave of online service outages rippled across the internet on Thursday afternoon, with a broad swath of popular platforms experiencing simultaneous disruptions.
Real-time data from outage tracker Downdetector showed a dramatic surge in user reports for companies including Spotify, Google, Discord and Snapchat.
The spike began shortly before 2:00 p.m. ET, with Spotify logging over 40,000 problem reports, by far the highest among affected platforms. Discord followed with more than 11,000 reports, and Google — which includes services like Search, Maps, and Gmail — registered over 10,800.
Snapchat users reported more than 3,500 outages.
“We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services. Please view our public status dashboard for the latest updates,” a Google Cloud spokesperson told The Post.
Each platform showed nearly identical outage patterns: a prolonged period of normal activity followed by a sudden and steep rise in problem submissions starting early afternoon.
The uniformity of the spikes has raised questions about whether a shared infrastructure provider or network routing issue may be involved, though no cause has yet been confirmed.
Affected users have reported problems ranging from login failures and dropped server connections to app crashes and total service unavailability.
Downdetector only registers an incident when the number of reports substantially exceeds the usual volume for that time of day, suggesting that Wednesday’s disruptions are far outside the norm.
The Post has reached out to Discord, Spotify and Snapchat for comment.
As of mid-afternoon, none of the companies had provided an official explanation.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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