Apps and platforms relying on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing service, were in a jam this morning after an hours-long outage took down a sizable chunk of the world's internet - in a striking example of how infrastructure consolidation makes the modern internet vulnerable to a failure by a single major provider. The affected platforms ranged from messaging apps like Snapchat and Signal to video games like Roblox and Fortnite, as well as financial service platforms like Venmo, Robinhood, and Chime, according to the Associated Press.
Two consolidated lawsuits are about to ramp up relating to social media platforms and the harms caused to users, especially teens, based on their designs. The litigation, which has been taking shape over several years, accuses Snap, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube of knowingly designing their platforms to addict users. [Bloomberg] The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a Second Amendment case, with the support of the Trump administration, which deals with a Texas law barring drug users including cannabis users from owning guns. [Associated Press]
"We continue to investigate the root cause for the network connectivity issues," wrote Amazon Web Services (AWS) late Monday morning. Coinbase acknowledged the impact of the AWS outage on its services. "Many online services, including Coinbase, experienced issues," a spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune. "Coinbase services have recovered. Some older asset transfer requests are still pending, which we are investigating."
Many of the world's largest websites, including Snapchat, Reddit and Roblox, were knocked offline on Monday after a huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage. More than 1,000 apps and websites - including banks such as Lloyds and Halifax - were impacted by problems at the heart of the cloud computing giant's operations in the US, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector. It said reports from users of problems globally had soared to more than 6.5 million during the outage on Monday morning. While Amazon said it had resolved the outage by 12:00 BST, experts say it demonstrates the perils that come with lots of companies relying on a single, dominant provider.
