Amazon Web Services seeing widespread outages, impacting major websites: reports
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is facing a major outage that’s impacting websites and services for universities, governments and companies, according to The Associated Press.
The Associated Press is also impacted by the outage, they said in a tweet. Downdetector — a website that tracks outages — showed more than 24,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Amazon.
Amazon said the outage was likely due to issues related to application programming interface (API), which is a set of protocols for building and integrating application software, and said it was working to resolve the issue.
This would be the third outage for the company this year.
AWS provides servers, storage, email and a number of other services to these platforms — effectively keeping large parts of the internet running. The outage is impacting user access to a wide variety of platforms.
Amazon’s web services are among the most widely used, including by the Canadian federal government. Some of the major websites that users reported as experiencing outages Tuesday include the popular streaming service Disney+, the messaging platform Slack, the digital wallet service Venmo, the language app Duolingo, and the stock trading service Robinhood.
Other services, including Amazon’s Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, also shared on social media that they were facing issues.
While the cloud service was down, the internet’s appetite for memes was not. Users quickly took to Twitter to share their unfiltered feelings about the massive outage.
Can’t work because Amazon is down. Can’t order Christmas presents because Amazon is down. pic.twitter.com/NMhwOZjE32
— Misery Loves Company (@hertruesoul) December 7, 2021
Me running to Twitter to confirm Amazon is down. pic.twitter.com/guu1sz5MBv
— News and Weather (@newsandweather5) December 7, 2021
Some looked on the bright side of the outage, framing it as a potential savings opportunity ahead of the holidays.
Y’all’s credit cards when Amazon is down. pic.twitter.com/7AatQECvnX
— Beks the Halls with the Entrails of Her Enemies (@BekahBunnie) December 7, 2021
Amazon is down. I guess this is the divine intervention that my bank account needed for the holidays. 😩 #amazon #amazondown pic.twitter.com/snskZBnHvi
— 🤍Ebony🤍 (@nurse_ebony_) December 7, 2021
Others poked fun at the company itself.
“The sound of silence” — because Amazon music is down.
— Mike F (@MikeF369) December 7, 2021
In June, websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and the New York Times were hit by a widespread hour-long outage linked to U.S.-based content delivery network provider Fastly Inc, a smaller rival of AWS.
In July, Amazon experienced a disruption in its online stores service, which lasted for nearly two hours and affected more than 38,000 users.
Users have experienced 27 outages over the past 12 months on Amazon, according to web tool reviewing website ToolTester.
— with files from Reuters, The Associated Press
by Global News
