Snapchap and Duolingo among apps disrupted amid widespread internet outage

A major internet outage has disrupted several of the world’s most popular apps and websites, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, and Canva.

The problems began around 8am on Monday and quickly spread, leaving millions of users unable to access key services.

Downdetector, a website which tracks complaints about online services, showed a spike in reports on Monday morning, including more than 2,681 at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and 500 reports of issues for the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website.

The root of the disruption appears to be a widespread issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon.

According to AWS’s official service status page, the company is experiencing “increased error rates” and delays across “multiple AWS services,” suggesting a significant infrastructure failure.

AWS is the backbone of much of the modern internet, providing computing power, data storage, and other infrastructure services to a vast number of companies.

Although many affected apps and websites have no visible connection to Amazon, they rely on AWS to function. As such, technical issues within AWS can have far-reaching consequences across the digital ecosystem.

Amazon Web Services is the world’s leading cloud services provider. In 2024, it generated $108bn in revenue and is a major driver of Amazon’s overall profitability.

A service health update by AWS posted at 9.26am on Monday said: “We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region.

“This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases.

“Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause.”