🔴Breaking: Global Internet Outage Exposes Fragility of the Cloud

A major disruption at Cloudflare, Inc. has cascaded through the internet today, leaving users around the world unable to access prominent platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, and numerous crypto-exchanges.

Cloudflare itself acknowledged “an internal service degradation” which it says may “impact multiple customers” as of 11:48 UTC today.

The outage underscores a critical truth: our reliance on centralized cloud infrastructure poses a single point of failure for massive swaths of the web.

What happened

• Around 11:30 UTC, the first reports of widespread website errors began appearing — users were met with generic “Internal Server Error” messages or service time-outs when trying to reach commonly used apps and websites. The Independent+1
• Error-reporting sites (including ones hosted behind the same infrastructure) spiked. Tom's Guide
• Cloudflare’s status dashboard confirmed the disruption and that recovery was underway, but warned that high error-rates may persist even as services return. cloudflarestatus.com+1

Why this matters

• Cloudflare powers or supports a large proportion of the internet’s websites — its outage doesn’t just hit one app, it ripples through many dependent services. Wikipedia+1
• When one infrastructure node or service fails, global impact can be severe. We’re seeing how dependent everyday life has become on cloud services.
• The problem is not theoretical: it is happening now.

Wake-up call: Data in the cloud is not inherently safe or sovereign

For those building internet businesses, owning your data, infrastructure and brand is critical. Today’s outage illustrates why you should consider:

• If you depend entirely on third-party cloud services, you risk being cut off when they fail.
• The “cloud” is not an escape from risk; it is simply a different kind of dependency.
• Sovereignty means having control. If your customer list, community platform, backups or offers are locked inside a cloud stack you don’t control, you’re exposed.

Action steps for the self-sovereign builder (that’s you)

1. Backup everywhere: Don’t rely on one provider. Mirror critical data to a local or home-based server, and consider offline backups.
2. Decentralize your stack: Mix cloud services with local infrastructure you control (home server, self-hosted CMS, peer-to-peer storage).
3. Build systems resilient to “single point of failure” events: Use alternative DNS, edge servers, self-hosted apps so that your community and business run even if major providers go down.
4. Communicate with your audience: Let your community know you are prepared — that builds trust. Show them you are capable of servicing them even when “the cloud” goes dark.
5. Test failure scenarios: Simulate an outage of your main cloud provider and ensure your business has a fallback plan.

Bottom line

Today’s outage of Cloudflare and the ensuing disruption across platforms is not just a tech-glitch. It is a signal that even the biggest cloud networks are vulnerable.

If you are building an internet business – as you are with “Internet Business Builder” and its sub-brands – you need to treat cloud infrastructure as one option among many, not as a guarantee.

The real future lies in layered, hybrid, and decentralized infrastructure where you retain control.

I’ll keep monitoring this and note any updates or root-cause findings.