How the Latest AWS Outage Took Down Snapchat, Amazon, and More: What This Means for Businesses and Everyday Users

The AWS outage on October 20, 2025, created a global ripple effect, disrupting many of the world’s top apps and services—including Snapchat, Amazon, Ring, Fortnite, Roblox, and countless others. Here’s how it happened, why the internet depends so heavily on AWS, and what this event means for businesses and everyday users alike.

Early on October 20, AWS (Amazon Web Services), the backbone for much of the modern web, experienced a large-scale failure centered on its US-East-1 data center region. Downdetector tracked over 6.5 million outage reports globally—over 1 million from the US in just the first two hours.

Affected companies ranged from social media giants like Snapchat and Reddit to key platforms such as Canva, Roblox, and Perplexity. Even critical applications in finance (Coinbase, Robinhood), e-commerce (Amazon.com), and entertainment (Disney+, Prime Video, Hulu) were disrupted.​

AWS users started noticing issues around midnight ET, with major services reporting login failures, blank pages, and inaccessible content. Businesses could not process orders, airlines (Delta, United) struggled to check in passengers, and even smart home devices (like Ring doorbells and Alexa) went offline.

AWS engineers responded quickly, but given the centralization of online infrastructure, it took several hours for most services to recover. By mid-morning, AWS reported “notable indications of recovery,” though some services experienced slowdowns or backlogs for most of the day.​

AWS is the world’s leading cloud computing platform, powering vast sections of the internet’s backend for businesses of every size. When AWS’s core data center goes down, the impact is felt everywhere from small startups to the likes of Snapchat, Amazon, and major financial applications. The outage highlighted the risks of over-reliance on a single provider; after all, a single regional disruption can take down services for millions across the globe.

• Business Resilience: Heavy dependence on one cloud provider can turn a technical incident into a business crisis. Businesses need contingency plans, multi-region infrastructure, and proactive communication with customers during outages.​

• User Awareness: Outages like this show how connected our daily lives are to unseen tech infrastructure. Outage monitors like Downdetector have become vital tools for troubleshooting and confirming issues.​

• Growing Scope: With AI, streaming, and even banking running on AWS, the scope and risks of such outages are likely to increase as more essential services move to the cloud.

This AWS outage was not the first, and likely will not be the last. Previous incidents, such as the 2024 Crowdstrike update that crippled Microsoft Windows systems, demonstrate that the world’s digital backbone is always one step from disruption.

For businesses, the need for disaster recovery and a more diversified infrastructure approach is clearer than ever.

For everyday users, understanding cloud dependencies offers perspective on why even the world’s largest websites can suddenly disappear.

​

Staying informed, proactive planning, and the ability to adapt during digital crises are no longer optional—they’re essential in our interconnected world.