On the morning of the 18th, YouTube encountered significant access errors worldwide, with users experiencing difficulties in viewing the home screen across various platforms, including web, mobile apps, and smart TV applications. The service disruption began around 10 AM, leading to a spike in outage reports on Down Detector, particularly from the U.S., where over 320,000 users reported access issues, along with similar complaints from users in India and the UK.

At 11:21 AM, YouTube addressed the problem through its official X account, confirming that the issues arose from their recommendation system which affected video displays on all platforms. Although the homepage began to show videos again, the company stated that they were actively working to resolve the overall problem. By around 11 AM, access issues on the Korean version of YouTube had largely returned to normal, indicating that the technical team was swiftly addressing the glitch.

This incident is reminiscent of a similar service disruption that occurred in October of the previous year, where users faced issues playing videos globally, including in South Korea. The recurrence of such technical problems highlights challenges faced by large digital platforms like YouTube in maintaining their service reliability.