Snapchat, Reddit, Slack, Venmo and More Go Dark amid Mass Internet Outage: Here’s What Happened

If you were trying to log in to work or open your favorite app early Monday, Oct. 20, you may have run into some frustrating issues.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing provider that powers a huge portion of the Internet, suffered a temporary outage caused by a problem with one of its core database products, the company told NBC News.

The disruption began shortly after 3 a.m. ET, when AWS reported it was “investigating increased error rates and latencies.” By 4:26 a.m. ET, the company said it was dealing with “significant error rates.”

At around 5 a.m. ET, AWS confirmed it had “identified a potential root cause” of the issue, and by 5:27 a.m., many of the affected apps and websites were returning to normal as the company worked through a “backlog of queued requests.”

By 6:35 a.m. ET, AWS reported the situation had been “fully mitigated.”

Apps and websites impacted by the outage included Slack, Reddit, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Venmo, Hulu, Ring doorbell cameras, and several government sites — including the British government’s online services and tax systems.

According to NBC News, gaming platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite were also affected, as were major apps like Coinbase, which reassured customers that their funds remained safe while its team worked on fixes.

It remains unclear whether the disruption was linked to a cyberattack, though The New York Times reported there were no signs suggesting one.

Harry Halpin, CEO of NymVPN, told The New York Times that his company — which provides VPN services used by soldiers in Ukraine — was also impacted.

“If your entire nation’s infrastructure relies on a few providers, all in the United States, and anything can go down at any moment, either for malicious reasons or just technical errors, that’s an exceedingly dangerous situation,” Halpin said. “Everyone takes it for normal. But it’s not normal.”