As students turned to their computes for their first day of virtual learning amid the new school year, the video conferencing app Zoom experienced a widespread outage. According to Down Detector, a website that tracks real-time issues and outages, Zoom went down just before 9 a.m. ET on Monday, with more than 16,000 people reporting issues with the video service, complicating an already nuanced situation with students and teachers alike adjusting to new forms of learning due to the pandemic.
.@zoom_us What is wrong with https://t.co/blmgFsitpL I can’t even get into my account! Critical!!!! #Zoom #ZoomDown pic.twitter.com/n9nVFEEPGZ
— Martin Brossman (@martinbrossman) August 24, 2020
Zoom acknowledged the outage in a statement shared to its website Monday morning, confirming that “we have received reports of users being unable to visit the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars. We are currently investigating and will provide updates as we have them.” The website listed partial outages affecting Web Client and Web Portal on the Zoom website, Zoom video webinars, and Zoom meetings. Zoom Phone and Zoom Chat, meanwhile, were said to be “operational.”
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Down Detector, meanwhile, reported more than 16,500 issues with the service. Of those reports, 75% pertained to log-in, 13% to joining conferences, and 10% to server connection. A live outage map showed that Zoom was down across all areas of the United States, largely affecting both the east and west coasts, as well as the Midwest. The United Kingdom also appeared to be impacted. Several people reported that the outage had begun at the very beginning of the school day, with one person commenting that it “went down in the middle of my virtual classroom for the day” and that “none of my students can log back in to Zoom.” The outage even prompted Atlanta Public Schools to issue a tweet confirming that classes had been impacted.
Currently @zoom_us is experiencing an outage impacting the eastern United States. We are working to resolve the issue and will provide an update when restored. Parents and students will hear from their local school regarding next steps and alternative ways for virtual learning.
— ATL Public Schools (@apsupdate) August 24, 2020
In an updated statement, Zoom said that they had “identified the issue causing users to be unable to authenticate to the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars, and we are working on a fix for this issue.” At 10:27 a.m. ET, Zoom said that they were “continuing to work on a fix for this issue.” The company said that it will continue to share updates to both its website and social media accounts.
