AWS Outage Disrupts Major Websites and Apps
A significant Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday, October 20, caused widespread disruptions, affecting popular platforms including Amazon.com, Snapchat, Robinhood, and Venmo.
Key Services Impacted
The outage, centered in the critical US-EAST-1 region, led to over 2,000 reported incidents in the United States alone, according to Downdetector.
Users experienced connectivity issues across a broad spectrum of services, from Amazon’s own Prime Video and Alexa to major apps like Duolingo, Coinbase, and The New York Times.
Full List of Affected Platforms
- Amazon.com & Prime Video
- Snapchat, Robinhood, Venmo
- Perplexity AI, Crunchyroll, Roblox
- Coinbase, Duolingo, Goodreads
- The New York Times, Apple TV
- Fortnite, PUBG Battlegrounds, Wordle
- McDonald’s App, Verizon, Chime
Root Cause and Response
Amazon acknowledged the outage through its service status dashboard, citing “increased error rates and latencies.” Engineers identified significant problems with AWS DynamoDB, a core database service, which cascaded to multiple dependent services.
“We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand the root cause,” AWS stated, with recovery efforts continuing throughout the day.
