 "Netflix outage hits users as Stranger Things season 5 drops today")
Streaming giant Netflix was down for thousands of users across the US and India on Thursday. According to Downdetector, more than 15,000 people in the US reported issues with the app, with 56 per cent facing streaming problems, 35 per cent experiencing server connection issues, and 10 per cent unable to log in to their accounts.
Multiple users reported these problems across major cities, including New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles.
Indian users across Tier-I cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad also reported problems with the app. While 79 per cent faced issues with video streaming, 17 per cent said the website was down, and 3 per cent experienced server-connection problems. The glitches spiked at 6 am (IST) today.
However, at the time of reporting, both the app and website appeared to be working fine in India.
Crash coincides with Stranger Things release
The outage coincided with the launch of the much-awaited fifth season of Stranger Things. Stranger Things 5 Vol. 1, which has four episodes, was released earlier today. The second volume of episodes will be released on Christmas (December 25), and the season finale is scheduled for New Year’s Eve.
In its fifth season, the show will see the heroes of Hawkins return to their hometown to take on Vecna and the Upside Down in one final epic showdown. The series will see Eleven go toe-to-toe with her former psychic counterpart, even as Will’s connection to the Upside Down becomes clearer.
Users react to Netflix outage
Several people took to X to share their disappointment, speculating that the launch of Stranger Things had caused the outage. The company has not officially responded to the crash. However, Netflix and Netflix India continued to promote the show on their X accounts, releasing snippets and announcing its release.
One user wrote, “Me staying up until 1 am and then Netflix going down instantly.” Another said, “They fixed the bandwidth, and Netflix still crashed.” A third user posted, “Well, the Netflix servers are down… This was expected with the FINAL season of Stranger Things.”
Another user said, “Why didn’t Netflix do a weekly release for #StrangerThings5 like a normal streaming service? They’d boost subscriptions, cut down on spoilers, and actually let the hype build the way it’s supposed to.”
Outages becoming common
The latest outage came a day after Google Meet users across India experienced a major disruption, with thousands reporting problems while trying to access the platform. Data from Downdetector showed a sudden surge in outage reports, crossing nearly 2,000 complaints within a short period.
In the last few months, there have been several major outages. Earlier this month, Cloudflare, the US company that protects millions of websites from malicious attacks, experienced a major global outage, triggering error messages across numerous platforms.
Some website owners were unable to access their performance dashboards. Platforms such as X and OpenAI also reported higher outage levels at the same time as Cloudflare’s disruption. The incident came less than a month after similar outages at other major cloud service providers, including Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure.