Why is the internet down? Amazon, BBC and Twitter face global outage

Affected websites displayed the message: "Error 503 Service Unavailable".

Cloud computing provider Fastly said it was behind the problems.

The firm said it was looking into issues with its global content delivery network (CDN) and was implementing a fix.

Websites are beginning to be restored.

Sites around the world are reporting errors Outages of various sizes were reported at Reddit, Twitch, Amazon, HBO Max, CNN, Etsy, and Paypal, according to tracking website Down Detector.

Many of the world’s biggest news organisations, including the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Financial Times and The Independent were also affected by the problems.

The Guardian tweeted: “The Guardian’s website and app are currently being affected by a wider internet outage and will be back as soon as possible”.

The cause of the outage is not known.

Downdetector shows the following websites have reported issues today

The UK government site has also been hit by the global web outage.

A Twitter statement reads: "We are aware of the issues with http://GOV.UK which means that users may not be able to access the site.

"This is a wider issue affecting a number of other non-government sites.

"We are investigating this as a matter of urgency."

We are aware of the issues with https://t.co/uLPSBt4jdQ which means that users may not be able to access the site. This is a wider issue affecting a number of other non-government sites. We are investigating this as a matter of urgency.

— GOV.UK (@GOVUK) June 8, 2021

Other sites were not fully down but still refused to work properly.

Twitter, for instance, loaded – but any emoji that were used in posts did not.

Not every large website was hit, with Facebook for instance continuing to load.

Workplaces services like Microsoft Teams and Slack also appeared to be working as usual.

Fastly said in a message on Twitter: "We identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions across our POPs globally and have disabled that configuration.

"Our global network is coming back online."

The outage comes hundreds of thousands of 25-29 became eligible for their COVID-19 vaccines, and were already experiencing trouble booking online.