YouTube Hacked Or Down? How To Check If 500 Internal Server Error Is Fixed

YouTube is one of the world’s biggest internet platforms, so when it goes down, lots of people notice. Reports across Europe are citing a “500 Server Error” when trying to navigate to the main page. Has the service been hacked? Here’s what we know.

At the time of writing, Google has yet to provide any concrete details about the server problems. The message itself, however, reads that “something went wrong” and “a team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with the situation.”

While there’s an air of comedy in the note, the problem it’s hiding appears to be rather serious. Outages were first reported at 9:42 a.m. EST today and have yet to be resolved. The vast majority of issues reportedly occur when trying to visit the site or watch videos. A small collection of reports also cite login errors as well. As the minutes and hours stretch on, conspiracies of hacks are starting to pop up. We can’t validate any of them, but that hasn’t stopped the social media speculation machine from doing its dirty work.

For now, users are encouraged to use sites like Down Detector to check the moment-to-moment activity of YouTube. There, you’ll find geographic breakdowns and traffic reports as the service comes back online.

As of this year, YouTube boasts over a billion users that watch hundreds of millions of hours of streamed content each day. With the current outage, we expect that number to be a bit lower for Feb. 21.

Is YouTube down for you? Do you think the 500 internal server error is evidence of a hack? Tell us in the comments section!