Why it feels like your favorite websites keep going down

Have you noticed that your favorite websites are frequently down? You’re not alone. Recently, Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure provider, faced a disruption that affected numerous online services, including Spotify, ChatGPT, and even Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform. This incident adds to a growing list of significant internet outages that have occurred lately. Just last month, an Amazon Web Services outage disrupted the daily lives of millions, complicating even basic tasks like ordering coffee or controlling smart home devices. Shortly after, Microsoft’s Azure service also experienced its own outage. So, what’s behind these recurrent issues? Experts suggest that these disruptions are a reflection of our society's increasing dependence on digital services and the consolidation of critical cloud infrastructure among a limited number of companies. This reliance makes it evident that even the biggest tech giants are not immune to technical failures. Eileen Haggerty, area vice president at IT and cybersecurity firm Netscout, noted that regardless of how advanced a tech provider's systems are, outages can still occur and are quite common. Cloudflare attributed its recent outage to a technical glitch rather than a cyberattack. According to the company, the issue stemmed from a “configuration file” meant to manage threat traffic, which unexpectedly exceeded its size limit, leading to a crash in the software system responsible for handling traffic for several services. Dane Knecht, Cloudflare's chief technology officer, elaborated on the situation, explaining that a routine configuration change led to a bug that caused a significant network degradation. Knecht acknowledged the disruption's impact and assured that measures are being taken to prevent future occurrences. Similarly, the Amazon outage was triggered by a bug when two automated systems tried to update the same data at the same time. IT outages are not a new phenomenon, according to tech experts. Mike Chapple, an IT professor and former NSA computer scientist, recalled that twenty years ago, outages were commonplace, often happening weekly. Today, however, the reliance on a few major providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google means that when outages occur, their effects are felt more widely. On the day of Cloudflare's outage, user-reported issues on Downdetector exceeded 2.1 million. Cloudflare itself manages an impressive 81 million HTTP requests per second, highlighting the scale at which these disruptions can affect users. Although the occurrence of three major outages in less than a month may seem alarming, Haggerty emphasized that while it feels like outages are becoming more frequent, the actual number of disruptions remains consistent. However, the growing number of sites and applications relying on these services amplifies the impact of such outages. Cisco ThousandEyes reported 12 major outages in 2025 so far, which is an increase compared to previous years. Trends indicate that many outages are associated with technical failures that unintentionally spread, issues that appear resolved but are not, and configuration changes that lead to cascading failures. While these patterns are not new, they are becoming increasingly prevalent, suggesting that similar disruptions are likely to continue in the future. In conclusion, as technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, the risk of outages remains a genuine concern that could affect any organization, large or small.