In the aftermath of last week’s significant disruption of Amazon Web Services (AWS)—an outage that temporarily incapacitated a number of widely used online services, including the encrypted messaging platform Signal—billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk swiftly turned his attention toward criticizing Signal’s dependence on massive technology corporations. His remarks suggested that a platform priding itself on digital autonomy and privacy should not be reliant on infrastructure provided by the very giants it seeks to differentiate itself from. However, Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, mounted a detailed and carefully reasoned defense of this relationship, explaining that the company did not select AWS because of convenience or loyalty to Big Tech, but rather because the structure of the modern internet leaves it with no truly viable alternative.
According to Whittaker, the real issue lies not in Signal’s particular decision to make use of Amazon’s servers, but in the alarming consolidation of control that defines today’s cloud infrastructure environment. Writing in a thoughtful series of posts on the decentralized networking site Bluesky, she made the argument that the so-called “choice” to rely on AWS is, in practical terms, no choice at all. The underlying architecture of the global cloud ecosystem, she wrote, is now dominated by only a handful of corporations—three or four at most—who together command virtually every layer of infrastructure required to operate a global-scale, low-latency communications network. This concentration of ownership, she argued, effectively eliminates competition and leaves smaller technology companies, even those deeply committed to independence, dependent on the same few providers that hold most of the internet’s structural power.
Whittaker expressed particular concern about how poorly many users understand this dynamic. She noted that a surprising number of people appeared unaware that Signal runs, at least in part, on AWS infrastructure. To her, this ignorance reveals something deeper and more troubling: a widespread lack of understanding that the capacity to host and maintain a complex global communications platform is essentially confined to a small oligopoly of cloud service providers. She insisted that the question commentators should be asking is not, “Why does Signal use AWS?” but rather, “How did we, as an industry, reach a point where operating a large-scale, secure, and real-time communications platform—with millions of concurrent users across every continent—has become impossible without depending on the infrastructure controlled by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google?”
In elaborating on this dilemma, Whittaker outlined the enormous technical and financial challenges involved in attempting to build an entirely independent network. Achieving the kind of consistency, global reach, and near-instantaneous communication that users expect from Signal would require a massive and extraordinarily costly physical presence across the world—data centers filled with computation and storage units, a network of servers positioned close to end users for low-latency interactions, and around-the-clock staff dedicated to maintenance, monitoring, and security. Without this vast infrastructure, interruptions and lag would become unavoidable, effectively making the platform inoperable for millions who depend on it for private, real-time conversations. The investment necessary to construct such a network from scratch would run into the billions of dollars—well beyond the reach of a nonprofit organization like Signal.
Whittaker also sought to reassure users regarding their privacy concerns. She emphasized that, even though Signal relies in part on AWS and similar providers, the app’s end-to-end encryption ensures that neither Signal itself nor Amazon has any access to user content or conversation metadata. The app’s technical architecture is deliberately designed so that communication data remains completely opaque to anyone but the sender and intended recipient. Thus, while the company must depend on the physical infrastructure of large cloud services, it still preserves the confidentiality and independence that define its mission.
Beyond Signal, the AWS outage exposed just how deeply intertwined countless industries and consumer services have become with these same few providers. The temporary failure not only disrupted social and communication tools like Signal but also cascaded across major global brands and everyday technologies. Companies such as Starbucks, the Epic Games Store, and Ring, along with widely used applications like Snapchat and even smart household devices like Amazon’s Alexa and internet-connected beds, all experienced service interruptions. In essence, the event offered a striking demonstration of how much of the world’s digital nervous system now runs through the infrastructure of a tiny number of hyperscale providers.
Reflecting on this incident, Whittaker described it as a potential moment of collective learning—a chance to confront the risks of centralizing the technical foundation of modern society in the hands of just a few players. Her hope, as she expressed it, was that this outage might prompt both the public and policymakers to grasp how fragile this concentration of power truly is. When one of these critical services goes dark, vast portions of the internet—and the economic and social systems that depend on it—can quickly follow. It is, in her view, a sobering reminder that the resilience of digital communication, privacy, and trust now depends not only on encryption or security protocols, but also on diversifying the very infrastructure upon which the internet operates.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/news/807147/signal-aws-outage-meredith-whittaker
