If Your Canva or Snapchat Isn’t Working, Blame the Latest AWS Crash

Culture Oct 20, 2025 0 3 Add to Reading List

If you tried using Canva earlier today and it wouldn't load, you’re not alone. Millions of people worldwide, including designers, freelancers, and small business owners in Nigeria, were affected by a massive global cloud service disruption.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backbone of many of your favourite apps, experienced a major outage that brought down platforms like Snapchat, Canva, Fortnite, Ring, and even some banking services.

What started as “one small technical issue” quickly spiralled into a reminder of just how dependent we all are on the cloud.

What Happened: The AWS Outage October 2025

Earlier today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported “increased error rates and latency” in its US-East-1 data centre in Northern Virginia, one of its busiest regions. That single fault caused a domino effect, taking several major online services offline for hours.

Snapchat users couldn’t send messages. Canva users couldn’t design. Alexa, Amazon’s smart assistant, went silent. Even developers using AWS cloud infrastructure experienced temporary website crashes.

It might sound distant, but the AWS outage 2025 disrupted lives and businesses in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, too. Many Nigerian freelancers rely on Canva for design jobs, use Snapchat for brand marketing, and host websites or apps powered by AWS servers. When those platforms go dark, work stops, and deadlines don’t care.

Canva Outage Nigeria: The Creative Block Nobody Planned For

For many Nigerians, Canva is more than just a design tool. It’s a source of income. Freelancers use it to create social media content for clients, entrepreneurs design product flyers, and influencers rely on it for visuals. When it went down, work literally came to a standstill.

As reports poured in, #CanvaDown began trending. Users took to X (Twitter), expressing shock and panic: “fuck!!! canva is down and I'm trying to finish a ppt for a presentation tomorrow!!!! AHKKKKK”

fuck!!! canva is down and im trying to finish a ppt for a presentation tomorrow!!!! AHKKKKK pic.twitter.com/TYpZeqtUz9
— Mochi. ૮( ᓀ . ᓂ )ა (@bryxndv) October 20, 2025

This Canva outage in Nigeria highlighted a profound truth: our growing creative economy depends heavily on global cloud services that we don’t control.

The Bigger Picture: Why Cloud Service Disruptions Hit Nigeria Hard

The AWS outage 2025 didn’t just disrupt entertainment or social media; it exposed a major vulnerability in how connected our world has become.

Most apps, websites, and services Nigerians use daily are hosted on global cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. These systems offer speed, scale, and reliability, but they’re also single points of failure.

When one region of AWS goes down, millions of users worldwide feel the ripple effect. In Nigeria, that could mean a startup app going offline, a business unable to process payments, or a freelancer unable to access files stored in the cloud.

And because Nigeria’s internet connectivity is already unpredictable, adding a global cloud service disruption on top of that makes things worse.

What Nigerian Techies and Creatives Can Learn

If you’re a tech freelancer in Nigeria, a developer, or a creative professional, there are a few key lessons from this global downtime:

1. Always have a backup plan.

Save your designs, documents, or project files offline or on another platform. If Canva or your cloud tool goes down, you should still be able to access what matters.

2. Diversify your tools.

Don’t rely on one single cloud service. Use alternatives; for design, storage, or communication. If one platform crashes, your work shouldn’t.

3. Communicate early with clients

When a major tool like Canva or AWS goes down, let clients know right away. Transparency builds trust, even when things are out of your control.

4. Monitor service status.

Websites like Downdetector or AWS Service Health Dashboard can alert you early when an outage starts.

5. Use automation wisely

If your app or business depends on automation hosted on AWS, add fail-safes that reroute traffic to another region or provider when one goes down.

6. Keep learning

Understanding how cloud infrastructure works isn’t just for developers. Creatives and business owners benefit from knowing where their tools live — and what happens when they stop working.

Will the AWS Outage 2025 Happen Again?

The truth is, global outages like this will happen again. Cloud systems are complex and run on thousands of servers, cables, and connections. As AI tools, digital platforms, and SaaS products become more common, the risk of disruption increases.

For Nigeria’s fast-rising digital ecosystem, from fintechs to creative startups, this is a moment to pause and think: How secure are the tools we depend on?

Building alternatives, creating redundancy, and supporting local cloud innovations are no longer optional. They’re essential if we want our digital economy to keep moving, even when the rest of the internet slows down.

If there’s one thing to take away from this moment, it’s this: don’t wait for the next outage to remind you how dependent you are on the cloud. Build your backup plans, save your files locally, and prepare for disruptions before they happen.

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