Some of the world's biggest apps and websites have been impacted by a widespread outage as Amazon Web Services urgently investigates a technical issue.
Roblox, Snapchat, Fortnite, Reddit, Canva and Duolingo were among the services affected, according to website Down Detector.
The problems appear to stem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides infrastructure for many major websites and apps.
FULL LIST: All the major sites and apps we know about that are impacted
Reports of problems with the hugely popular services began to surge between 6pm and 7pm today and remained high for more than an hour in many cases.
Just after 8pm, AWS said it had "identified a potential root cause".
In another update just before 8.30pm, AWS said it was "seeing significant signs of recovery".
"We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests."
By 9.35pm, AWS said the "underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated" and that most requests were succeeding normally.
"Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution," it said, adding that some services were dealing with backlogs.
The DNS (Domain Name System) is often described as the phonebook of the internet. It converts domain names such as www.9news.com.au to the actual IP addresses of the websites or services.
AWS has been providing technical explanations, saying "we are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery".
"We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests," AWS said.
"We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share."
READ MORE: What history tells us about how Trump-Albanese meeting may unfold
Reddit remained down for an extended period but it was unclear if it was linked to the AWS outage. Reports of an outage began much later than the other services and remained high beyond 9pm AEDT.
The company said it was "experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue".
Other social platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram, X and Bluesky remained relatively unaffected.
But some artificial intelligence services were impacted. ChatGPT users didn't flood Down Detector with complaints but OpenAI reported problems with logins lasting at least half an hour.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, posting to X, blamed an outage with his AI search platform on an "AWS issue".
Popular encrypted messaging service Signal had reports of its service being down.
"We are aware that Signal is down for some people," president Meredith Whittaker said on X.
"This appears to be related to a major AWS outage."
READ MORE: Two dead after cargo plane skids off runway into sea at one of Asia's busiest airports
The currency trading app Coinbase confirmed "many" of its users were unable to access its service.
"Our team is working on the issue and we'll provide updates here," the company said.
Graphic design platform Canva said it was experiencing "significantly increased error rates which are impacting functionality".
The software company has about 220 million active monthly users.
"Our team is actively investigating the issue and working to restore full access as quickly as possible," the company said in an update on its website.
Popular online gaming platform Fortnite, which has about 80 million active monthly users, confirmed the outage was affecting its login pages.
"We're investigating this now, and will update you when we have more details," the gaming platform said on X.
The outage is also reportedly affecting some overseas banks, including the Bank of Scotland.
"You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today," the bank said on social media.
"We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this."
What apps and websites are down?
Down Detector shows a huge list of sites and apps that users are reporting errors with, including:
- Epic Games Store
- Fortnite
- Hinge
- Tinder
- The PlayStation Network
- XBox
- Steam
- Pokemon GO
- Zoom
- Xero
- Snapchat
- Roblox
- Ring
- My Fitness Pal
Users also reported difficulty accessing Amazon services including Amazon.com, Alexa and Prime Video, according to Down Detector.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing.
AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon, the mega company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people.
"Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis," AWS says.
It says its customers are companies "of every type, size and industry".
It provides infrastructure that is used for data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development and testing, big data analytics, and customer-facing web applications.
DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
