Global AWS Outage Disrupts Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite and More: Millions Affected Worldwide
A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday sent shockwaves across the internet, taking down several popular apps and services including Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite, Roblox, and Alexa. The disruption, which began in the early hours, originated from AWS’s US-East-1 region, one of its most critical data centers powering a large part of the global internet.
Thousands of users around the world reported being unable to log into Snapchat, send messages, or access other online platforms. Reports surged on Downdetector, confirming a widespread impact that affected not only social media but also major e-commerce, gaming, and cloud-based systems.
What Caused the Outage?
Amazon has not yet released a detailed technical explanation, but early reports point toward a possible server or DNS-related failure within its cloud infrastructure. AWS engineers said they were “actively working to restore affected services” and confirmed that some systems were gradually coming back online by late afternoon.
This outage exposed just how dependent the modern digital world has become on major cloud providers. With countless apps hosted on AWS, even a brief failure can cripple entire ecosystems — from online banking and communications to entertainment and home automation.
Impact on Popular Apps
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Snapchat: Users faced login issues, snaps not sending, and feed loading errors across both Android and iOS.
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Ring: Smart doorbells and home cameras stopped responding, leaving many customers unable to access live feeds.
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Fortnite and Roblox: Gaming servers went offline, frustrating players worldwide.
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Alexa and Prime Video: Users reported connectivity problems and delayed responses from smart devices.
The outage also affected platforms like Coinbase, Reddit, and Slack, showing how one cloud service provider’s failure can disrupt millions of users simultaneously.
What AWS Said
In an official update, Amazon Web Services confirmed that multiple services experienced disruptions due to “connectivity issues” in its US-East-1 region, which hosts some of the company’s core computing and database infrastructure. Engineers have since isolated the problem and reported that most services were being restored as of Monday evening.
However, several apps, including Snapchat, remained partially unstable in some regions.
Bigger Picture: The Risk of Centralization
This incident is a harsh reminder that much of the internet relies heavily on just a few major providers — AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. When one goes down, half the web goes dark with it.
Experts warn that such outages could become more common as digital infrastructure grows more centralized, urging businesses to implement redundant systems and multi-cloud strategies to avoid similar shutdowns.
Conclusion
As of late Monday, most AWS-hosted services were back online, though users continued to report scattered connectivity problems. The company promised to provide a detailed post-incident report soon.
For now, millions who struggled to access Snapchat or check their Ring cameras can breathe a sigh of relief — but today’s outage is a clear signal that even the internet’s biggest giants aren’t immune to failure.
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