Amazon Web Services outage wreaks havoc across the internet

Many online services suddenly went down today due to a major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS). The cloud computing platform is used by hundreds of popular apps on the internet to power their online services, such as Reddit, Snapchat, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Apple Music, and Fortnite, among many others. So, when AWS experiences an outage, it’s a domino effect for any app that relies on it.

According to Downdetector, a website that tracks internet service outages, AWS first started experiencing issues around 3 AM EST today, with problems continuing to persist as of 10 AM EST. At the same time AWS started having issues, major apps like Snapchat and Reddit also began seeing a significant spike in user-reported outages.

Amazon released a statement on the AWS Health Dashboard at 3:11 AM EST, saying, “We are investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services.” Throughout the night, Amazon provided updates as it deployed fixes to restore services, stating that it is “making progress on resolving the issue” and that it has applied “multiple mitigations” to its servers to help reduce the impact of the outage.

Downdetector reports that over 1,000 companies have been impacted by the AWS outage, with more than 6.5 million user reports filed since it began (via BBC). Although services and apps are gradually coming back online as of 10 AM EST, thousands of user reports continue to pour in about issues in the US, but also around the globe, highlighting the widespread scale of this outage.

What apps are affected by the AWS outage?

Some of the world’s largest apps are impacted, spanning gaming, productivity, and security

When you hear about an “Amazon Web Services outage,” it might seem like it only affects Amazon, but as I’ve mentioned, since so many other companies depend on Amazon’s cloud platform, they can be significantly affected too. That’s when I say this outage has wreaked havoc on the internet, I’m not exaggerating.

I’ve mentioned some of the affected apps, but many more are impacted, and even the ones listed here are just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a sample of the major apps affected by today’s AWS outage that are now recovering but may still be experiencing issues.

• Apple Music
• Venmo
• Microsoft 365 (including Microsoft Teams)
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Blackboard
• Asana
• Procore
• Snapchat
• Reddit
• Perplexity
• Slack
• Starbucks
• McDonald’s
• Zoom
• Xbox
• PlayStation Network
• Roblox
• Duolingo
• Epic Games/Fortnite
• New York Times (including Wordle)
• Instacart
• Ring
• Blink Security
• Fetch

It’s worth noting that some apps, like Reddit, have taken matters into their own hands to resolve issues. While Reddit faced problems this morning, it quickly implemented a fix and is monitoring the situation for any further issues.

The AI app Perplixity was also impacted by the AWS outage and went offline earlier today. Its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, posted on X that the “root cause” was an AWS problem and confirmed the company has resolved it, reporting that “Perplexity and Comet are back up running and stable.”