Critical failure on Monday (20) took down essential services such as Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Alexa, Ring, Coinbase, Duolingo, Canva and even Amazon.com itself
On the morning of Monday, October 20, 2025, the digital world experienced what can be described as an “internet blackout.” Amazon Web Services (AWS), the invisible backbone of a significant part of the global online infrastructure, suffered a critical failure that took down essential services such as Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Alexa, Ring, Coinbase, Duolingo, Canva and even itself. The outage began around 3:11 am ET, in the US-EAST-1 region, in Northern Virginia, and directly affected 141 AWS services, including DynamoDB and EC2, with full recovery only at 6:01 pm ET on the same day.
The impact was global and immediate: millions of users were left without access to communication, entertainment, shopping and even banking services platforms. Infrastructure experts point out that the failure originated from DNS (Domain Name System) resolution problems and flaws in the DynamoDB API, which triggered a chain reaction affecting other essential services.
Global dependency on AWS
AWS is not just a cloud service provider; she is the backbone of modern. With more than 200 data centers in 38 regions around the world, AWS hosts a wide range of services that support the operations of companies of all sizes and industries. The disruption of its services does not just affect Amazon, but reverberates throughout the global digital economy.
Experts warn of the risks of this centralization. Patrick Burgess, from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, highlights that “the world now runs in the cloud”, and that the internet has become an essential service, comparable to water or electricity. With so many critical operations dependent on a single provider, failures like the one that occurred in October 2025 could have devastating consequences.
What about the crowds on the subway?
In Brazil, especially in São Paulo, an increase in crowds at stations was observed during the period of the AWS failure. While there is no direct evidence that subway digital billboards utilize AWS services, it is plausible that passenger information systems, which often rely on cloud platforms, were affected by the outage. The lack of real-time information may have led passengers to make decisions based on assumptions, resulting in crowding and confusion.
Time to rethink digital infrastructure
The AWS failure in October 2025 serves as a warning about the vulnerability of the modern internet. Overreliance on a few cloud infrastructure providers creates a single point of failure that can affect millions of users simultaneously.
Therefore, it is imperative that companies and governments reconsider their digital infrastructure strategies, adopting more resilient and diversified approaches, for example:
- Internalize strategic software servers for the company
- Ensure data backups that respect the “Backup 3, 2, 1” strategy – 3 copies of the same file, stored in 2 different locations (1 in the cloud and 1 on local servers), and 1 offline backup.
- Choose cloud service providers that have national data centers
- Prefer software solutions that work offline and not just online.
- Structure manual processes to be used in future digital breakdowns; from the internet crash, to the bankruptcy of the cloud provider.
These points are aligned with the advent of Digital Sovereignty, which together with Technological Self-Sufficiency contribute to ensuring the continuity of essential services in times of digital crisis.
Do you want to delve deeper into the subject, do you have any questions, comments or want to share your experience on this topic? Write to me on Instagram: .
*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Jovem Pan.
