"Is Zoom down?" is the question of the hour as swaths of users are reporting login issues while attempting to access their accounts on the popular video-conferencing platform (via Gizmodo).
Down Detector shows that reports of outages skyrocketed at around 8 a.m. Eastern time on August 24, peaking at 9:45 a.m. with more than 15,000 reports.
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Zoom is down at the most inopportune time
August 24 is the first day that school is back in session for many students and teachers, but unfortunately, the Zoom platform is already causing a bumpy start for many educational institutions around the country.
Outages are affecting users worldwide, including countries beyond the US borders, such as the United Kingdom. But according to Down Detector's outage map, the east and west coasts of the US are bearing the brunt of Zoom's malfunction.
We reached out to Zoom to get answers on what is causing the popular webinar platform to fail at such an inopportune time, but a company spokesperson replied with a copy-and-paste of a recent tweet.
“We have received reports of users being unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars. We are currently investigating and will provide updates as we have them. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience," the Zoom spokesperson told Laptop Mag.
We have received reports of users being unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars. We are currently investigating and will provide updates as we have them. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Please follow https://t.co/aqz5nS7fZY.August 24, 2020
According Zoom's oft-updated status report page, the video-call platform revealed that it has discovered the culprit behind the outage.
"We are in the process of deploying a fix across our cloud. Service has been restored already for some users. We are continuing to roll this out to complete the fix for any users still impacted," Zoom wrote.
With Zoom already crumbling under pressure, institutions may question whether the video-conferencing platform can manage a large-scale user base with the sudden influx of students, educators and work-from-home employees.
We reached out to Zoom, once again, to uncover what caused the outage. As of this writing, we have not received a response. Should we receive a reply, we will update this article.
