YouTube users urged not to call police to report outage

YouTube fans were forced to go cold turkey this morning when a major outage prevented viewers from accessing the streaming site for more than an hour.

Many users who entered the Google-owned website at around 1:30am GMT were met with a message that said: “Sorry, something went wrong. A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.”

Others were able to see YouTube’s homepage but could not open any videos, The Guardian reports.

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The video sharing platform is now back up and running, although the cause of the disruption has yet to be revealed.

The breakdown in services may have alarmed some users. Police in the US state of Pennsylvania posted a tweet urging members of the public not to call the emergency services over the fault.

Of course, there’s a good chance the police were just joking - but it wouldn’t be the first time bewildered tech users have contacted the authorities over misbehaving gadgets.

A woman reportedly called West Midlands Police to request help unlocking her laptop, according to the Daily Mirror.

“I’m calling because my laptop is closed and I need the password,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, the emergency services operator gave the caller short shrift.