"Why Was YouTube Down for an Hour?" Lunar New Year Outage Chaos... What About Compensation for Paying Subscribers? [Why&Next]

Outage Triggered by Data Indexing Error
Ministry to Examine Google’s Obligations

On the 18th, the last day of the Lunar New Year holiday, YouTube suffered an outage of about one hour, triggering a flood of user complaints. In response, the government decided to examine whether Google, the operator of YouTube, violated any of its obligations as a service provider. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to investigate whether there was any violation of obligations under the Basic Plan for Telecommunications Disaster Management as soon as it receives Google's explanation materials regarding the YouTube error.

A disruption occurred on YouTube's mobile and web services on the 18th. Image generated by ChatGPT.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 19th, at around 10:00 a.m. the previous day, a message reading "An error occurred" appeared on both the YouTube application (app) and the web, and video content was not displayed. The YouTube access disruption lasted for more than an hour, and the ministry received a report related to the error from YouTube at around 10:30 a.m., about 30 minutes after the problem began. It was later confirmed that the ministry received a report from YouTube at around 11:30 a.m. stating that recovery had been completed.

In a notice, Google stated, "Due to an issue with our recommendation system, videos were not being displayed on platforms such as the YouTube homepage and app, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids," adding, "The homepage has been restored, and we are working toward a complete resolution." YouTube reported to the government that a "data indexing error" was the cause of the outage. Data indexing involves creating an address book (index) in advance to indicate where specific data is located, and it is required for the "recommendation function." Because the disruption was concentrated on YouTube's main screen, where content is displayed based on recommendation algorithms, many users who tried to enjoy content during the Lunar New Year holiday experienced inconvenience.

Yonhap News Agency

An official from the Ministry of Science and ICT said, "When an error occurs, service providers are generally required to submit explanation materials to the government within one month," and added, "Google has not yet submitted its explanation materials, and once they arrive, we will review them and take appropriate measures." The official went on to explain, "Key points of verification will include whether the provider built redundancy into its services so that critical data would be backed up in duplicate even if one part experienced an outage, whether it properly notified users and faithfully fulfilled its obligation to report to the government in order to protect users, and, in the case of domestic services, whether simulations were conducted in a virtual network environment when updating the service."

Following the outage, some YouTube Premium content users have begun calling for compensation. One user said, "I logged on to watch content during the golden holiday period, but I was unable to enjoy any content because the outage continued," and lamented, "Isn't voluntary compensation from Google necessary for paying subscribers?" In particular, even at the time when Google announced that services had been normalized, some functions on the app and web were still showing errors, resulting in a time gap before full normalization.

Under the current Telecommunications Business Act, if a value-added telecommunications service provider suspends its service for two hours or more, a compensation process for paying users is initiated. An official from the Broadcasting and Media Communications Commission said, "Depending on the terms and conditions of paid services, companies may voluntarily come up with their own compensation plans." In response, Google Korea stated, "There has not yet been any specific discussion regarding a compensation plan."

Meanwhile, YouTube also experienced an access disruption in November last year due to an issue with the content delivery network (CDN) provider Cloudflare.