Popular streaming service Hulu went down on Thursday afternoon, leaving tens of thousands of viewers unable to access their favorite shows.
“We’re having trouble playing this,” an error message said. “Rest assured, we’re working on it.” Other users were simply unable to get videos to load, seeming to get stuck right after the network identification badge for multiple series.
Update 12/19/2019 at 3:40 p.m. PT: Hulu has now reported that the site should be “back in business,” tweeting out the news from its official account.
According to Down Detector, Hulu began receiving reports of users being unable to access the platform around 11:00 a.m. PT but appeared to resolve the issue within the hour. Then, about two hours later, they were flooded with reports that users could not access streaming content. By 12:30 p.m. PT, more than 26,000 people reported being unable to access video streaming, with video content simply failing to load.
According to Outage Report, virtually every major city in the country reported significant numbers of outages.
On Hulu’s support page, the following message was posted for community members:
“Live stream playback trouble got you down? Don’t worry! We’re investigating this behavior and hope to have things smoothed out in no time,” the company wrote. “We are currently experiencing longer than normal wait times, but an advocate will assist you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
By 3:00 p.m. PT #HuluDown was the number two trending topic on Twitter in the U.S. Users, understandably, did not react positively to the outage.
One of the primary sources of user scorn was Hulu’s $10 price increase to Hulu + Live TV, which took effect Wednesday, December 18, just 24 hours before the outages. Hulu explained the price increase by saying that “the new price better reflects the substantial value of Hulu + Live TV, and allows us to continue offering all of the popular live news, sports, and entertainment programming included in the plan.”
However, all plans — not just Hulu + Live TV — were affected by outages on Thursday. Users were, understandably, displeased:
Hulu: we are going to increase our prices by $10
Also Hulu: we’re not going to work#HuluDown
— Stephanie (@stephers684) December 19, 2019
So everything down except the ads? #HuluDown pic.twitter.com/ClSHJf9Bka
— M-BEZZLE (@OMGegi) December 19, 2019
Others lamented the interruption to their binges:
WTF @hulu IS DOWN?! I was on a serious Project Runway binge here people!! WTF! ???? #HuluDown pic.twitter.com/KpDZPSqcgr
— shae shukla (@ThatGirlShaeXo) December 19, 2019
I really THOUGHT I could sit down after finals and watch my show and then Hulu said: #HuluDown pic.twitter.com/Vmt4mu5Nya
— niko???????????????? (@nikorosa214) December 19, 2019
Still others complained about Hulu’s perceived lack of response to or transparency about the issue:
I don’t mind the system being down for a little bit, it happens…but you could get in front of it and act like your maybe a little bit sorry for not providing a service you’ve been prepaid for. #HuluDown
— Pops (@JClung39) December 19, 2019
We’ve reached out to Hulu for more details and will update this story when we hear back.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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