Internet outages hit the East Coast, causing issues for Verizon, Zoom, etc.

I guess it comes do “how widespread is the zoom outage.”

I.e. is zoom down for a lot of people whose internet is otherwise fine? If my fridge in Wisconsin is down because California lost power that’s more newsworthy.

It sounds like some people were experiencing a total loss of connectivity, but some were experiencing issues only with some sites.

You're not wrong, but you can imagine for a non technical audience, the "internet" is the thing you browse, and "zoom" is the meeting machine you use and they are not inherently related.

Zoom's choices on network peering and redundancy could cause it to be grouped together with Verizon. Assuming, for example, it's a problem with some big peering points. Or, say, both accepted the same bad BGP route for something while other places didn't.

Though it's also possible that a lot of Verizon customers first see the outage as "Zoom isn't working" and Wapo is just blindly echoing that grumbling. Seems likely since perhaps the first internet experience of the morning for many would be "join the Zoom call".

https://downdetector.com/ shows both Verizon and Zoom as services that were reported out. Some of the Zoom reports from people using Fios who can't distinguish where the problem is but that's because it's hard, I thought it was my router at first

I see your point but your analogy also works like the headline. Your refrigerator stuck without power is immediate bad news (as opposed to a lamp or toaster being out) and Zoom being out is similarly bad news for lots of people at this time.

In addition to all the other good points here, mentioning Zoom and the others also makes the story more vivid and "real" to people, which is important when you're competing for attention, clicks, and shares. You'll notice the headline would've basically been complete & sufficient after the word Coast: "Big Internet outages hit the East Coast." But just in case there are any Homer Simpsons out there unable to imagine the impact of such a thing, they're letting you know, that thing you think of as Zoom is actually the internet too.

Also if you mention Zoom, you can then go on about how Zoom has "become essential" in these unprecedented times when we're all in this together now more than ever stay safe. If you're the type to get worried or outraged, that contradiction between "essential" and "not working" is a better magnet for your worry or outrage, which again makes you more likely to read & share it. I think editors have this stuff internalized and do it unconsciously. My cynicism about it has reached rather a sobering depth.

AWS was reporting "connectivity issues with an internet provider" here: https://status.aws.amazon.com/

It did seem to be causing issues for my N Virginia EC2 instances.

haha, whatever you do, don't watch _The Graduate_ !

At this point I just assume that photos with news articles don't really have any direct connection to the content of the article. It's either laziness, an attempt at emotional manipulation, or a combination of the two. I'm always pleasantly surprised to find that a photo is actually the exact thing being discussed in the article.

Currently merging. Thanks!

Then again, since most American consumers only have access to a single ISP, might as well erroneously co-mingle one's singular ISP with the entire internet. /s