• YouTube was hit by a worldwide outage starting around 4 pm ET
•  Issues were plaguing the website, app and the company’s streaming service
• The platform addressed the outage on X at 4:46 pm ET in a post 

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

Updated: 17:13 EDT, 22 August 2023

Amazon Web Services (AWS) are back online following a four-hour outage that impacted hundreds of websites that use the company’s cloud hosting service, including Delta Airlines, TikTok and IMDB.

DownDetector monitors online outages and showed hundreds of thousands of issue reports from users worldwide who were unable to access AWS or websites that use that platform.

AWS provides cloud computing services to individuals, universities, governments and companies worldwide, such as servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development and security. 

The problems, which hit at 2:49 pm ET, stemmed from a subsystem responsible for capacity management for AWS Lambda at a data center in Virginia.

AWS Lambda lets customers run code for different types of applications. 

The platform’s Health Dashboard states, ‘ as of 6:37 pm, the backlog was fully processed… and all AWS Services are operating normally.’

The incident at Amazon Web Services disrupted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon’s own massive e-commerce operation.

That included The Associated Press, whose publishing system was inoperable for much of the day – the outlets said the blackout happened as Donald Trump was in court today.

Along with commerce sites, video games like Fornite, PUBG Battlegrounds and Dead by Daylight were also offline.

AWS’ service health dashboard showed ‘degradation’ among four services: AWS CloudFormation, AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway and Amazon Connect.

When AWS goes down, so do other websites that use its services, which is an embarrassing blow to the Amazon-owned platform – these companies, universities, individuals and governments pay to use the services.

AWS did not acknowledge the outage on its social media platforms but provided this message on the health dashboard: ‘We continue to experience increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. 

‘We have identified the root cause as an issue with AWS Lambda and are actively working toward resolution.’

However, AWS Support responded to a frustrated user on Twitter who tweeted that AWS console was down.

‘Sorry for the trouble & any concerns this has caused, Gabriel. I can confirm we’re currently investigating the increased error rates and latencies. Feel free to refer to the AWS Health Dashboard to view further,’ the reply tweet reads.

A similar out hit AWS in 2021 – but this incident lasted for eight hours and disrupted Amazon’s shipping operations just weeks before Christmas.

The December outage shut down communications between the e-commerce giant and the fleet of thousands of drivers it relies on, preventing drivers from getting route assignments or packages.

Issues hit the app Amazon uses to communicate with the network of independent contractors who carry out much of its last-mile shipping, leaving vans that were supposed to be on the road idle, sources told Bloomberg.

Amazon Web Services was formerly run by Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos as Amazon CEO in July.

The cloud-service operation is a huge profit center for Amazon. It holds roughly a third of the $152 billion market for cloud services, according to a report by Synergy Research – a larger share than its closest rivals, Microsoft and Google, combined.

Reddit has been hit with a worldwide outage impacting millions of users as forums ‘go dark’ to protest the website’s increased developer fees.

Issues with problems on the website and app surfaced on DownDetector, a site that monitors online outages, at 10:25 am ET – but reports dissipated about two hours later.

It is unclear why Reddit was down Monday, but it occurred when more than 7,000 subreddits were switched to private in the largest user-led online protest. 

The movement is frustrated over price changes in developer fees, which could amount to millions of dollars for some users.

The protest is set to remain for 48 hours, but some users have warned they will not revert pages to the public if Reddit does not reconsider the increased pricing plans for apps that provide access to the site.

Users flocked to Twitter to inquire about a possible outage hitting Reddit, with one tweeting: ‘Nice to see even Reddit itself getting in on the Reddit Blackout today.’

What is Reddit?

Reddit launched in 2005 as a place for users to explore different topics organized in subreddits – more than 100,000.

Some popular examples are News, Movies, Funny, IAmA, Pics and LifeProTips. 

Users subscribe to these forums, allowing them to see new posts and interact with others shared by members. 

Other users can then determine the popularity of a post by either upvoting or downvoting the post.

And the more upvotes push the post higher up in the subreddit. 

What is Blackout Day?

Users have banned together in protest against Reddit’s April announcement that revealed it is increasing fees starting July 1. 

The change will charge developers access to its application programming interface (API) for third parties with ‘additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights.’

While Reddit sees the change as a way to sustain its future, developers hit back, saying it will destroy theirs. 

Christian Selig, the developer of Reddit client app Apollo, said the increased pricing new pricing would cost him as much as $20 million per year, Variety reports.

Apollo lets users view content from numerous sources, such as Imgur, Reddit and YouTube, in one place.

Other popular apps that connect to Reddit include Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet. 

Selig continued explaining that this means Apollo plans to stop operations on June 30. 

He tweeted about the Blackout Sunday, thanking ‘the Reddit community and everyone standing up.’

Twitter users Rebecca Sloane responded: ‘I relied heavily on a subreddit support group during a difficult time in my life. 

‘For months, Apollo was the first app I opened when I woke up and the last one I closed before going to sleep.’

Subreddits for gaming, with more than 37 million members, and music, with over 32 million users, have been switched to private.

Thousands of other forums have joined the movement, some with more than 40 million members. 

What has Reddit said?

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed users’ ‘frustrations’ in a Friday post to the site, laying out how the changes will work.

‘Effective July 1, 2023, the rate for apps that require higher usage limits is $0.24 per 1K API calls (less than $1.00 per user/month for a typical Reddit third-party app),’ Hoffman wrote.

He continued: ‘Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.’

While Hoffman is looking out for the future of Reddit, the move could force some app developers to shut down. 

Reddit’s primary revenue stream has previously been its advertising sales and premium subscriptions.

The company’s website posted in April: ‘We’re working to build a more sustainable, healthy ecosystem around data on Reddit, and continuing to roll out moderator tools for Reddit native apps.’

‘To ensure developers have the tools and information they need to continue to use Reddit safely, protect our users’ privacy and security, and adhere to local regulations, we’re making updates to the ways some can access the Reddit Data API:

‘We are introducing a new premium access point for third parties who require additional capabilities, higher usage limits, and broader usage rights[…]