Amazon Web Services (AWS) is experiencing a sudden spike in technical issues, causing widespread disruptions across various digital platforms on February 16, 2026.
According to Downdetector data, reports began to climb sharply at 4.46 PM, with nearly 100 incident reports logged within minutes against a baseline of just 15.
Is AWS down?
Yes. AWS is down.
The timing of the AWS service degradation is particularly notable as it closely mirrors a massive global failure at X
Technical logs indicate that the X outage began escalating at 4.20 PM, roughly 20 minutes before the surge in AWS reports, suggesting a potential cascading effect across shared cloud infrastructure.
- Infrastructure strain: The rapid increase in reports suggests a core service failure within AWS regions that handle heavy traffic for major social and enterprise applications.
- Coordinated failures: Industry observers are highlighting the synchronized nature of these disruptions, as both X and AWS saw nearly vertical spikes in error reports during the late afternoon hours.
- Operational impact: Businesses relying on AWS for hosting and data processing are reporting increased latency and connection timeouts, echoing the timeline of the broader X platform collapse.
The near-simultaneous reports of instability at both AWS and X point toward a significant localized or regional infrastructure event affecting high-traffic web services.
Cloud service recovery and monitoring
AWS has not yet confirmed the specific cause of the connectivity issues, though the platform’s status dashboard is under heavy scrutiny from developers worldwide. As companies pivot to backup servers, the interdependence of global social media platforms and underlying cloud providers like Amazon has once again become a central point of discussion.
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