YouTube service is down around the world

YouTube users around the world are reporting that the worldwide video streaming service is currently down. The outage has been going on for over an hour now, and impacts YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music.

[UPDATE] It looks like the service may be back up now

Users, attempting to visit the site for their daily video fix, have reported seeing an error message or a blank page in some cases. The outage has been extended to the YouTube apps on iOS and Android as well. Clicking on any channels resulted in users being greeted by a picture of a monkey holding a hammer and the text "500 Internal Server error." A message read: "Sorry, something went wrong. A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation. If you see them, send them this information as text (screenshots frighten them)" followed by a long string of code.

Frantic YouTube users have swarmed on social media, desperate to find out what was going on and #YouTubeDown quickly rose to the number five spot on Twitter's Trending Topics list in the United States, and the top Trending Topic on the websites worldwide list of trends.

YouTube has tweeted that the company is aware of the disruption to YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music and was working to fix it as soon as possible.

Thanks for your reports about YouTube, YouTube TV and YouTube Music access issues. We're working on resolving this and will let you know once fixed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated.

— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2018