Update: The AWS outage seems to be resolving itself, and services are slowly coming back online.
In a major disruption to the digital landscape, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a widespread outage early this morning, February 16, 2026, causing cascading failures across numerous online platforms. The incident, which began this morning, has left millions of users unable to access popular streaming services and social media sites that rely on AWS for their backend infrastructure. Officials from Amazon have not yet provided a detailed timeline for resolution, but initial reports suggest the issue stems from a critical failure in one of the company’s primary data centers in Northern Virginia, a hub for much of the internet’s cloud operations.
The outage was confirmed by DownDetector according to its website.
The outage has primarily affected services hosted on AWS, which powers a significant portion of the web. Streaming giants such as Disney+, and Hulu reported…
