Users reported encountering "500 internal server errors," blocked access messages, 

By Joe Lombardi From Daily Voice

Large portions of the internet were disrupted for hours Tuesday morning, Nov. 18, after a widespread outage at Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure provider. 

The outage caused issues for numerous popular websites and online services, including X (formerly Twitter), Discord, PayPal, Shopify, and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Daily Voice sites were also affected.

Users reported encountering "500 internal server errors," blocked access messages, and malfunctioning site features. 

Sporadic outages began around 6 a,m. and seems to be linked to problems with Cloudflare’s security systems and network infrastructure. Even Cloudflare’s own status page and API were briefly affected during the incident.

“We are aware of the issues and are investigating them as a top priority,” Cloudflare announced in a statement Tuesday morning.

The disruptions left users unable to access accounts, process payments, or complete tasks on affected sites.

While the root cause of the outage has not been officially detailed, it coincided with planned maintenance in Cloudflare’s data center. It remains unclear if the maintenance work contributed to the incident.

Cloudflare is one of the largest providers of internet infrastructure, powering millions of websites and services globally. Its systems improve security, optimize performance, and prevent cyberattacks. When Cloudflare experiences issues, the ripple effects often extend across the internet.

This outage follows another major incident in October, when Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a technical failure that also disrupted significant portions of the internet.

Check back to Daily Voice for updates.