X, Spotify, bet365 and ChatGPT were among the many platforms disrupted by a major outage on Tuesday, causing more than 10,000 users to report problems linked to the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare earlier in the morning.

Heavily trafficked sites such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), bet365, Canva, BrightHR, and social media sites X and Facebook were also among those who experienced chaotic outages. With issues first reported around 11am, users of each platform saw an error message indicating that problems with Cloudflare meant that the page could not show: “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”.

Following the disruptions, the company said in a server update that it was “experiencing an internal service degradation…” They added: “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts.”

Cloudflare is an internet infrastructure company that provides network and security services powering many of today’s online experiences. Around a fifth of all global websites use some of its services. It is so heavily depended upon that the tracking website Down Detector, which monitors such outages, was also affected by the technical problems itself. Once its systems loaded, it showed a dramatic spike in outages.

Dane Knecht, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, admitted that his company had “failed” its customers in a damning social media post:

“I won’t mince words: earlier today we failed our customers and the broader Internet when a problem in @Cloudflare network impacted large amounts of traffic that rely on us. The sites, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cloudflare depend on us being available and I apologize for the impact that we caused.”

Graeme Stuart, head of the public sector at Check Point, a cybersecurity firm credited with creating the first firewall, said:

“These platforms are vast, efficient and used by almost every part of modern life… When a platform of this size slips, the impact spreads far and fast and everyone feels it at once.”

The latest update from Cloudflare suggests that some issues may persist as the company attempts to repair the damages: “The team is continuing to focus on restoring service post-fix. We are mitigating several issues that remain post-deployment.”