A wave of frustration swept across the internet as users worldwide reported outages in some of the most popular platforms—Amazon, Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, and Canva all struggled to stay online. The underlying issue, according to early estimates, appears to stem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backbone of much of the modern web. AWS itself acknowledged that it was experiencing “elevated error rates” and delays affecting multiple services, which essentially rippled outward into the apps and websites that rely on its cloud infrastructure to function.
The disruption highlights just how deeply entangled AWS is in the daily digital lives of millions. From gaming to shopping, from language learning to design work, countless activities ground to a halt. For younger users, Roblox and Fortnite downtime meant broken social routines, while businesses reliant on Canva or Amazon’s e-commerce and cloud backbone scrambled to maintain operations. Even casual users trying to open Snapchat or practice on Duolingo were reminded of the fragility of a system that runs on a handful of centralized infrastructures.
At the moment, AWS has not provided a full explanation of the root cause, only confirming that its engineers are working to stabilize services and restore normal operations. Historically, outages of this scale are resolved within hours, but the cascading effect reminds us of how dependent the internet has become on a few cloud giants. Every time AWS sneezes, the web catches a cold.
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