YouTube was down because 2020 isn't over for seven weeks – it's back now

YouTube is down
(Image credit: Shutterstock / AIexVector)

Update: YouTube is back online after going down for more than an hour on Wednesday night during prime-time viewing hours in the US. We've updated our news story to reflect that YouTube is back up and running.

YouTube was down for over an hour on Wednesday, making its videos inaccessible. You could access the YouTube website, however, all videos appeared to be blocked with an error message reading: 'An error occurred. Please try again later.'

Later didn't come for an hour. At 7:23pm ET, over an hour ago, the official TeamYouTube Twitter account confirmed the bad news for YouTube views, but suggested that the Alphabet-owned video streaming platform is working on a fix. By 8:38pm ET, YouTube was back online.

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YouTube wasn't the only Google service that was down because of this glitch. We were also having trouble watching YouTube TV, which was even more problematic because many paid subscribers weren't able to access television programming across the US during prime time hours.

We'll update this news story if YouTube clarifies the issue.

Matt Swider