YouTube Experiencing Issues | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Experiencing Issues

downdetector.com

83 pointsjoenathanone48 comments

Seems to be pretty widespread: All the usual ISPs (Cox, Comcast, Spectrum etc), Google itself, reddit, and even Twitter all seem to be showing the same spike. Wonder what's causing this one.

To be clear, Youtube isn't fully down (at least for me), but it's slow and unstable enough to effectively be unusable. I've been getting error codes in the middle of videos, something I haven't seen in months, if not years.

That always seems to happen on downdetector but all of the other services listed as having problems seem to be working fine for me. Except YouTube.

Could be that packet loss and retransmission might be more noticeable when you have large data streams?

Total speculation, but it kind of feels like a BGP thing

That would be my amateur guess, but who knows. Way back in the day (2003 maybe?) there used to be a site called "Internet Health Report" or something similar where you could check all the interconnects between the major backbone networks when something like this happened. Sadly that's long gone, and I haven't seen anything similar since.

EDIT: This seems to be the best we've got now: http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm. Lot of 0s on there ATM.

Routing protocols or some supporting protocols are about all I can think of that would have that kind of potential.

So given the graphs of basically everything spiking on the downdetector home page, are we saying it's basically a majority of internet hiccuping?

Actually, isn't downdetector.ca a user-reported thing? So I imagine a ton of people were having issues with YouTube and thought it was their ISP (I know I did, I first checked speedtest-cli and the downdetector for Rogers)

This is a good point, and the disadvantage of crowd-sourcing it. There's no actual network analysis going on on DownDetector, so there's definitely room for some confusion if people blame the wrong thing.

That said, the info here: http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm definitely seems to suggest something beyond just youtube.

It is a disadvantage, but it's also the best down detector there is. I think there are a couple of others that just ping websites to see if they're up, and very few websites actually go down down nowadays.

Downdetector.com is meant to be an instantaneous sanity check of whether you should go unplug your router for the 3rd time today or not, and it's pretty great at that, even if it exaggerates a bit.

If it's this many unrelated services, it might be a BGP hijack

I had never heard of them before tonight, but the line graphs under each logo on their home page are well done.

"It's not just me. It's not just youtube. It's everything"

https://downdetector.com/

FWIW, youtube-dl[0] seems to be working fine, and is still better than first-party use for all the usual reasons like enforced bitrot.

0: http://youtube-dl.org/

My initial thought was it was my crappy internet again. Kept rebooting the modem/router until I realized other sites were fine.

This happened immediately after the YouTube app on my Apple TV self-updated so for a short while I believed it was the new app that was broken.

Every time Google changes the Apple TV app it gets worse. The very first version was a native app, since then they've all been various horrible HTML apps.

Interesting, it’s not just me! Haha I thought my internet was acting up tonight, but apparently not. YouTube was being very unstable tonight for sure. Videos cutting to infinite loading spinner in the middle, or not playing at all, intermittently.

Finally, those downloaded videos on my phone are coming in handy.

Is Google Photos subject to the same issues? I shared a video with a friend 2 hours ago, and they could only watch the first 5 seconds before it pausing forever. Same thing happened with me when I tied to reproduce the issue.

Seems to be back!

Still choking on anything higher than 360p for me.

That's really weird. I pointed one of my domains at a YouTube video around the same time this seems to have started.

Probably totally unrelated.

I was watching a great video about how Jeff Beck achieves his signature sound, now I'm stuck here with you lot

I was watching a guy construct ever more elaborate versions of Ninja Warrior courses for his backyard squirrels.

That sounds awesome—what's the channel name?

Sounds like Mark Rober to me.

Correct! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTvS9lvRxZ8)

His rather unorthodox fingerstyle technique is most of it.

My Dad used to have his signature model Strat and to this day it's probably my favorite Strat that I've ever played owing to the neck shape, modern bridge, and rolling nut.

He does some pretty cool stuff with the tremolo arm too.

I was watching Hennessey, the flying cat that stuck the landing on a five floor leap from the burning building the other day and trying to find out if he had been found yet. No luck, appears he's still mia.

I was watching a live camera overlooking a railway line in Tokyo and now I have no idea if it's still raining there or not.

Yes its still raining. https://tenki.jp/radar/3/

It is. Source: asked my colleagues who are in Tokyo.

Much appreciated. :)

If you have rudimentary Japanese skills, you could try dialing a random payphone in the area? Maybe someone will pick up and let you know, or even describe the weather.

I’m somehow standing at a roadside in Tokyo. Probably going to last until end of the day, sky is overcast, about #fafcff I’d say. Visibility is good, wind calm.

I was having issues earlier today (in the last two hours) but it has resolved itself for me at least.

I've lost my purpose in life

You jest, but a lot of the friendly niche stuff on Youtube has been a bright spot for me for several years now, even more once the pandemic happened. I'll watch cool, quiet videos of a train plowing its way across snow-covered country in Switzerland to chill out, friendly low-key gaming streams to hang out in chat, long form documentaries on all kinds of cool stuff when I'm more awake, and on and on. Youtube is one of the few places left online with SOME content that's just chill and friendly.

Hopefully it comes back soon.

Here's another you might enjoy: an eastern European couple that just quietly and simply tend to preparing delish looking meals outdoors: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIix6MklfJFywa_36iDj8Sw

Links please. :)

Norway (my mistake) train cam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-imG6CNF9kI. There are a ton of these. Not quite as pretty now, as the snow is largely melted, but still lovely countryside, especially if you catch the early morning stuff.

Gaming streams are as numerous as stars in the sky. I prefer to watch after the fact (lose the interaction, but easier to skip around), and generally like the people that are hanging out with their chat and telling great stories and anecdotes rather that doing super competitive stuff. For that, Vinny from the Vinesauce group is pretty great: he's got both an edited down "best of" youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/vinesauce) and a full stream archive channel(https://www.youtube.com/user/vinesaucefullsauce).

VTubers are also a whole wild crazy phenomenon unto themselves, and while I don't usually watch full streams, some of the highlights from some of them (Korone especially) are pretty great if you're of the right persuasion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUaJGcdiOt0). There's also an ENORMOUS creative fan culture around them: art, games, and some pretty slick remixes(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QhdIradBc).

As for long form docus, I highly recommend EmpLemon. The guy went from making YoutubePoops to doing incredible, well-researched pieces on a number of things, and his magnum opus is "there will Never Ever be another driver like Dale Earnhardt" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxTAJNifDAI). You may think you don't give a shit about Dale Earnhardt. You will change your mind by the end of the video.

These are live videos off trains right now in Norway?

The train is in a tunnel right now and has perfect video.

Very curious on the technical setup for this, is it sponsored by the rail line?

Amazing.

As the video description says, it's not ACTUALLY live, due to legal issues. But it is a long, ongoing stream, and to my knowledge the videos are swapped out on a daily or weekly basis, so you are getting a somewhat "real time" idea of what the route looks like.

Thanks for the Dale documentary recommendation. Tears galore right now.

Experiencing playback stuttering and other issues in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

My condolences.

Just reporting how widespread the issue was. Don't know why you have to be snarky and rude.

Didn’t realize how much I depend on YouTube until now…

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