A massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage disrupted multiple online platforms including Snapchat, Netflix, Zoom, and Slack on Thursday, affecting millions of users across the globe.
According to Downdetector, user reports of service interruptions surged around 10:45 a.m. EST, primarily linked to AWS’s US-East-1 region, a central hub that supports some of the world’s most used cloud-based services.
In a statement, Amazon Web Services acknowledged the disruption, saying engineers were investigating “increased error rates and latency across multiple systems.”
“We are working urgently to restore full service and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” the company said.
The outage temporarily shut down several high-traffic applications, causing login failures, content streaming issues, and messaging delays. Services like Snapchat, Netflix, Tinder, Zoom, and Slack were among those affected.
By late afternoon, AWS announced that most of its systems had been restored, although some users continued to experience intermittent issues.
Tech experts noted that the outage underscores the global internet’s heavy reliance on AWS infrastructure.
“This incident highlights how dependent the world has become on a few major cloud providers. A short disruption can ripple across industries instantly,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.
AWS has experienced similar large-scale disruptions in recent years, with notable outages in 2021 and 2023. The company has pledged to conduct a full post-incident review to prevent a recurrence.
