On February 18, 2026, YouTube confirmed the resolution of a significant global outage that affected users worldwide, with hundreds of thousands reporting issues. The outage, which began around 7:50 PM ET, was primarily caused by a malfunction in its recommendation system, impacting platforms such as YouTube.com, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids. According to Downdetector, at its peak, over 320,000 users in the United States and more than 30,000 in the UK reported problems. The Hindu emphasized the widespread nature of the disruption, noting that thousands of users globally were affected, highlighting the platform's vulnerability in maintaining operational stability. YouTube stated, 'The issue with our recommendations system has been resolved, and all of our platforms are back to normal.' The Hindu reported that the outage affected thousands of users worldwide, further emphasizing the scale of the incident, with hundreds of thousands experiencing disruptions late Tuesday.