Among the many casualties were social platforms like X and Trump’s Truth Social, plus AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Sora — all momentarily thrown out of whack.

Meanwhile, Shopify users were also locked out of their storefronts, job-seekers couldn’t load Indeed, and even New Jersey’s transit system felt the crash.

Cloudflare assures this wasn’t a cyberattack and blames it all on an internal mishap. Coincidence or not, the company was doing some scheduled maintenance at around the same time.

It is estimated that the company handles around 20% of the world’s internet traffic, which is exactly why this kind of scenario turns heads — especially after Amazon Web Services had its own disruption not long ago.

Cloudflare’s (NET) stock dipped in early trading and largely recovered by the end of the day. However, shares still closed down 2.8%.

But beyond the headlines and stock markets, these types of mini catastrophes have once again reignited bigger conversations. Such as… as governments push digital IDs and societies lean harder into online everything, people are starting to ask the uncomfortable question. What happens when the systems we trust… just don’t?

Many systems went back to business as usual within a couple hours so… if nothing else, Tuesday’s hiccup was a reality check for the 21st century.