The AWS outage is a warning call – we need a more resilient digital environment for all
On Monday, millions of people around the world experienced problems with key communications and services apps, from messaging to banking to travel and government services.
With the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage came questions, confusion, and alarm. How could so many apps, so many services, so many means of communication and methods of accessing news and information be dependant on a single company or provider? The disruptions spoke to a larger, overarching problem regarding the way OUR internet works. They are more than technical glitches – they are democratic failures.
‘When a single provider goes dark, critical services go offline with it – media outlets become inaccessible, secure communication apps like Signal stop functioning, and the infrastructure that serves our digital society crumbles,’ says Corinne Cath-Speth, ARTICLE 19’s Head of Global Team Digital.
‘We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot be dependent on a handful of companies.’
With the recent crash resulting in so many people being cut off from accessing information, news, and services they rely on, it’s time to look at what we need to do to address these problems. This will certainly not be the last time such disruption occurs.
It’s time to change thinking about digital infrastructure. As Corinne Cath-Speth and Don Le outline in their article in Tech Policy Press, ‘real change requires not just improving existing cloud infrastructure, but building entirely different infrastructures rooted in the needs of communities and people.’
