A widespread outage on Amazon Web Services (AWS) sent shockwaves through the internet on Monday, disrupting several major digital platforms and productivity tools — including Snapchat, Canva, Zoom, Roblox, and others — that rely heavily on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.
The outage, which originated from AWS’s US East Coast region, caused multiple global platforms to experience significant downtime, locking out millions of users and businesses that depend on the service for daily operations.
The Extent of the Outage
According to Amazon, the disruption began in the early hours of Monday and affected multiple services hosted in one of its largest cloud regions. In an operational update, the company acknowledged the issue and assured users that its engineers were “actively working to mitigate the impact and fully understand the root cause.”
Reports from Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service disruptions, showed a spike in user complaints for major platforms such as Snapchat, Canva, Zoom, Fortnite, Roblox, MyFitnessPal, Signal, Slack, Peloton, and Duolingo.
Gaming and entertainment platforms were among the hardest hit, with Epic Games, PlayStation Network, and Clash Royale also experiencing instability. Even the London Stock Exchange Group’s data services and cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase were not spared.
Companies React
Many companies that depend on AWS for cloud hosting took to social media to inform their users about the ongoing issue.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that the company’s downtime was linked to AWS, saying:
“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
Similarly, Canva, which serves over 170 million users worldwide, issued a statement acknowledging the problem:
“Our cloud provider is currently experiencing problems. It’s not the experience we want for you, and we’re working closely with them to help re-establish service. Thanks for your patience as we bring things back to normal.”
The company also directed users to its official status page, canvastatus.com, for live updates.
As of the time of reporting, there were no confirmed reports of the outage affecting Nigerian users, but the ripple effect of such disruptions highlights how dependent many global services have become on AWS’s infrastructure.
Why AWS Outages Matter
Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud computing provider, controlling a major share of the global market — ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company’s systems power a wide range of essential internet services, from streaming platforms and mobile applications to e-commerce and government data systems.
AWS provides critical services such as data storage, computing power, AI tools, and analytics platforms, allowing companies to operate at scale without managing their own physical servers. But this convenience also creates a single point of failure — when AWS experiences downtime, it can ripple across industries almost instantly.
This incident is a reminder of the centralized nature of the modern internet, where a small number of cloud providers control much of the world’s digital infrastructure. Even brief outages can disrupt communication tools, financial systems, and customer-facing applications across continents.
A Growing Pattern
While AWS outages are rare, they are not new. The company has faced similar incidents in recent years, including a major one in December 2021 that took down services like Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon’s own delivery operations.
Each recurrence raises critical questions about resilience and redundancy in cloud infrastructure. As more organizations migrate to the cloud, experts argue that dependency on a single provider could become a bigger risk than anticipated.
The Bigger Picture
The AWS outage underscores the fragility of digital ecosystems that form the backbone of modern life. For users, it’s an inconvenience, but for businesses, it can mean delayed transactions, lost revenue, and broken customer trust.
As global platforms increasingly rely on centralized cloud services, the need for multi-cloud strategies and distributed infrastructure becomes more pressing. For now, AWS remains at the heart of the internet and when it stumbles, the ripple effect is felt worldwide.
