#HuluDown trends as iOS and Apple device users of the streaming service experience outages
The streaming platform Hulu seems to have suffered outages across the U.S. in the early hours of Tuesday, April 28. Hulu users took to Twitter to complain about the outages that culminated in the formation of the hashtag and the trend #HuluDown.
The official Twitter account for Hulu, however, did not comment upon the issue. In fact, most curiously, the account that is usually active in sharing memes and responding to customer complaints had not tweeted or retweeted anything in 15 hours (at the time of writing this report).
The Hulu Support Twitter account, however, has been responding to complaints with the identical answer: “Apologies for the difficulty! Our team has informed us they've made an adjustment which should resume playback on your end. Just reboot the device in use and let us know if there's any further issue.” The account did not provide any further info on what the problem may have been.
From what is visible under the #HuluDown hashtag, the outages have been going on for several hours. At the time of writing this, Twitter users continued to tweet about the streaming service not working for them. Downdetector.com, a website that offers real-time status and outage information for various services, reported as many as 3,800 cases of outages on Hulu. Of the problems, per the site metrics, 67 percent of the complaints were about streaming, 27 percent were about logging in and seven percent were about opening the app or website.
Slash Gear, a tech news website, reported that the issue seems to stem from the iOS collection of Hulu apps. Users in web browsers on desktop machines and users with Smart TVs seem to be able to access Hulu easily. Users on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV have reported issues with the Hulu app. The website further noted that users reported no issues with the Hulu app or streaming access on Xfinity boxes, Roku, and Nintendo Switch. Even Xbox One and PlayStation 4 seem to be running Hulu without issue.
Users, annoyed with the outages, tweeted things like, “I'm so annoyed that Hulu's down and I'm also wide awake in bed at 4 AM, what's the real problem here #HuluDown.” Another user tweeted, “Hulu really decided to have a breakdown when I want to watch my shows now what am I supposed to do? Sleep? #HuluDown.” A Twitter user noted, “People are waking up to see #HuluDown trending realizing 2020 savagery spares no one.”