Amazon outage: Here's what we know so far

Amazon went down on Thursday, effectively slowing the U.S. capitalist machine for at least a few hours. Thousands of bereft shoppers reported issues with the online retail giant starting just before 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT, which left them temporarily unable to complete their purchases.

Crowdsourced outage tracker Downdetector received nearly 160,000 error reports for Amazon within 15 minutes, with checkout issues accounting for 38 percent. (Disclosure: Mashable and Downdetector share the same parent company, Ziff Davis.) Users also reported problems with Amazon's mobile app, as well as with its product page. Downdetector reports that the disruption does not appear to be limited to any particular network provider.

Amazon's official customer service X account acknowledged complaints about the problem, though has not yet provided any explanation as to what might be causing it. Complaints on Downdetector began to drop significantly two hours after they first began to spike, and some users report that Amazon had resumed working for them. As of writing, Mashable is not encountering any issues accessing Amazon's website in the U.S. or Australia. However, others still claim that they are having problems.

"We’re sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues," Amazon Help responded to multiple disgruntled customers. "We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issue."

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Drone strikes by the Iranian military recently damaged three Amazon data centres in the Middle East, disrupting some of its services in the region. However, these strikes only appear to have impacted local operations, meaning the U.S. outage is likely unrelated despite online speculation to the contrary.