Breaking: Widespread Internet Disruption Linked to AWS Outage
Update: Services Being Restored After Major AWS Outage Hits Amazon, Snapchat, and Others
A significant outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday, October 20, 2025, has triggered widespread disruptions across a vast number of major online platforms and services.
User reports began flooding outage monitor Downdetector early Monday, showing massive spikes in complaints. The disruptions stem from “increased error rates” and delays at Amazon’s critical us-east-1 data center in North Virginia, a major hub for global internet traffic. Amazon has acknowledged the issue on its official service status page.
The outage has caused cascading failures for the countless services that rely on AWS for hosting and backend operations. Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of the AI search engine Perplexity, confirmed the root cause, stating on X (formerly Twitter) that the outage affecting his platform was due to an “AWS issue.”
Affected services span nearly every sector and include:
- Amazon Services: Amazon.com, Prime Video, and the Alexa voice assistant.
- Financial & Trading Apps: Robinhood and PayPal’s Venmo.
- Social & Communication: Snapchat.
- Gaming Platforms: Roblox and Fortnite.
- Educational Apps: Duolingo.
- Smart Home Systems: Ring.
- Telecom Providers: Vodafone.
Engineers are actively working to resolve the issue, but a timeline for full restoration has not yet been provided. Users of the affected platforms are advised to monitor official service status pages for the latest developments.
