Everybody with a social media account knows that outages happen. From Meta’s Facebook and Instagram hiccup last year to X.com’s brief problem earlier this year, it’s inevitable for an occasional shutdown to happen. But on October 20, 2025, tech users around the world complained about a major internet outage affecting multiple apps and platforms, including Amazon AWS, the Ring doorbell and Snapchat. While Amazon owns Ring, Snapchat is its own entity, so the shutdown has confused customers across the board.
As Snapchat users wait for the app’s restoration, we have the latest updates on the widespread outage below.
Why Is Snapchat Down?
The only known reason for Snapchat’s outage today is because of a major internet outage in multiple countries, which is still under investigation.
Snapchat’s X.com support account acknowledged the problem by tweeting, “We’re aware that some Snapchatters are having issues using the app right now – hang tight, we’re looking into it!”
We’re aware that some Snapchatters are having issues – hang tight, we’re looking into it!
— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) October 20, 2025
Is Snapchat Still Not Working?
At the time of publication, the amount of reported Snapchat usage problems on Downdetector decreased from 22,000 to less than 10,000, but users complained their apps were still not working.
“My feed is still blank with no friends,” one person reported on Downdetector.
Who Owns Snapchat?
Snap Inc. is the owner of Snapchat. As previously noted, the major internet problem today has impacted Amazon’s services, but Amazon does not own Snapchat.
What to Know About the Major Internet Outage Today
The chaos began in the early morning hours on October 20 with all AWS platforms affecting banks, media and even airlines for a brief time. Shortly after the problem was clear, Amazon said that its customers could not access data stored in the DynamoDB because the Domain Name System (DNS) encountered an issue, per CNN. DNS is a type of phone book for the internet.
Amazon fixed the DNS issue just after 6:30 a.m. ET. However, the company warned that some regions around the globe could still see errors loading platforms.
“The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,” Amazon said in a statement. “Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution. Additionally, some services are continuing to work through a backlog of events such as Cloudtrail and Lambda.”
Amazon further advised customers to clear their caches in their browser settings.
Though rumors of a cyberattack quickly spread, there’s no evidence to back up the presumptions. Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity firm NymVPN, said that the massive outage “looks like a technical fault affecting one of Amazon’s main data centers,” according to CNN. “The internet was originally designed to be decentralized and resilient, yet today, so much of our online ecosystem is concentrated in a small number of cloud regions. When one of those regions experiences a fault, the impact is immediate and widespread.”
This story originally appeared on Hollywoodlife
