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The popular torrent site YTS has been unreachable for more than a day, leaving millions of its users in the dark. The site's domain names point to a Cloudflare error, suggesting its servers are offline, but there is no official update from the operators to explain the current downtime.
With millions of regular users, YTS is arguably the most visited torrent site on the internet today.
The current operators ‘unofficially’ took over the YTS brand in 2015 after the original group threw in the towel. Since then, it has amassed a rather impressive user base.
After adopting one of the most iconic piracy brands, YTS faced its fair share of legal troubles. In 2019, the popular torrent site and its operator were accused of mass copyright infringement in multiple lawsuits filed by filmmakers in the United States. Surprisingly, YTS managed to settle these lawsuits to live another day, although that came at a price, also for its users.
More recently, the site dealt with a string of domain troubles. Last November, its long-standing YTS.mx domain abruptly stopped resolving, prompting a move to YTS.lt before the operators settled on the current YTS.bz domain earlier this year.
Extended Downtime
This week, YTS.bz went dark again. Starting a little over a day ago, YTS users noticed that the popular torrent site became unreachable.
The domain currently returns a Cloudflare “504 Gateway time-out” error, with the diagnostic page showing that Cloudflare is working fine, while the origin server does not respond. That typically points to hosting problems.
Before the shutdown, some people noticed that it appeared as if content was removed from the site, but that could also mean that a part of the hosting infrastructure broke down.
Whether the downtime is the result of an enforcement action is unknown. Rightsholders have previously targeted YTS and its infrastructure, however, so it is an option.
‘Gateway time-out’
The site’s other official domains, including YTS.lt, all redirect to the .bz domain and logically point to the same Cloudflare error. For now, there is no working version on the site, besides copycats.
No Official Response
Adding to the confusion, the status tracker ytsproxies.com continues to list the official domains as online. These reports are inaccurate, as each of the listed domains resolves to an error page.
The operators, meanwhile, have not responded. YTS’s official Telegram channel was last updated in March, and the new X account @YTSreal has not mentioned the recent downtime.
This leaves users without an explanation, leaving a vacuum that’s quickly filled by rumors, with unofficial mirrors and copycat sites lining up to fill the demand.
Extended stretches of downtime are not unusual for YTS, however, and the site has so far always resurfaced after previous troubles. Whether that will happen again has yet to be seen.
Whatever the cause, the downtime takes one of the most prominent piracy targets offline, at least for now. If more information becomes available, we will update this article accordingly.
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Update June 1: After more than two days of downtime YTS appears to be back online.
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