A massive internet failure has crashed through the online world, knocking out major platforms like Amazon, Snapchat, Fortnite, and Canva in the early hours of today.
The source of the chaos is a serious Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that has left millions unable to log in, stream, or even access their smart devices.
The problem started in the US-EAST-1 region around 3:11AM ET, according to AWS’s own status page, where the company confirmed “increased error rates and latencies” across multiple services. Though centered in the U.S., users around the world are now feeling the impact.
Reports have flooded Reddit and X, showing everything from frozen screens to disabled smart homes. Alexa devices can’t answer commands, alarms have stopped working, and even the McDonald’s app and Airtable are struggling to connect.
A post by Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, said: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
Amazon confirms ongoing AWS investigation
At 3:51AM ET, Amazon issued a follow-up saying teams were “actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand the root cause.” They promised another update in 45 minutes, though no clear recovery timeline has been provided.
For context, AWS is the world’s largest cloud platform, powering everything from streaming apps to fintech dashboards, so when it stumbles, the internet stumbles with it.
On Down Detector, a popular site used to track digital service crashes, nearly every major web platform turned red by dawn.
Snapchat, Ring, Roblox, Clash Royale, Life360, MyFitnessPal, Xero, Robinhood, Fidelity, JPMorgan, PayPal, Venmo, Amazon Music, Prime Video, Clash of Clans, Fortnite, Wordle, Duolingo, Coinbase, HMRC, Vodafone, PlayStation, and Pokémon Go were all marked as having severe problems.
Many users saw login failures, content not loading, or transactions getting stuck in loops.
The issue is spreading beyond entertainment. Payment platforms like Coinbase are experiencing downtime, showing just how deep AWS’s roots run through the internet economy. Crypto traders are particularly vocal about failed transactions and price updates not refreshing on time, a real nightmare when markets move fast.
While AWS has not yet identified what triggered the outage, some engineers in online forums are pointing to internal service synchronization errors that might have cascaded across global regions. Others are suggesting a routing misconfiguration inside Amazon’s data backbone. Nothing is confirmed yet, and as of this writing, Amazon has not given a full explanation or an ETA for restoration.
Until then, the internet remains shaky.
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