The uber-popular social news and discussion site, Reddit experienced a massive outage today that last for just over four hours.
The Reddit app is favored for people posting about a variety of subjects. It being down has a significant impact on millions of Redditors seeking information or trying to post.
At 12 p.m. PT (3:15 p.m. ET), Downdetector suddenly saw a surge of outage reports that peaked over 47,000 reports in the first half hour. The outage was widespread affecting posters across the globe.
The outage ranged from intermittent periods where users could access the site but it was sluggish and refused to load comments. Other times the site was completely down with Reddit's custom error page appearing.
In a statement, a Reddit spokesperson told Tom's Guide that "there was a bug in a recent update we made, but a fix in place and we're ramping back up."
No other details were shared on what the bug might have been or how it was affecting Reddit servers. That statement came in around 1:45 p.m. P.T., and the spokesperson added that they did not have a timeline for when the site might return to stability.
As of this writing, the site appears to be mostly back to full functionality. Some Tom's Guide colleagues reported seeing a red error bar on the site, while others reported slow load times. Otherwise, it appears posting, commenting, and the feeds are back online.
Reddit acknolwedges outage
Shortly after the outage began, the Reddit server status website changed showing that something was affecting the service.
A note at the top of the page reveals that reddit is working on the issue.
The X Reddit Status posted a similar message at 12:38 PM Pacific.
Investigating: We are currently investigating this issue. https://t.co/PLSwLrcuYdNovember 20, 2024
Reddit status intermittent
Access to Reddit appears intermittent, a Tom's Guide colleague got the above image when they tried to access the website.
However, others were able to get on to the main page, though it did appear sluggish.
I was able to access the site but received an error message before it reloaded to the same error message above.
Which reads, "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: connection failure"
Reddit confirms outage on Twitter
Yes. We're working on it. https://t.co/8MZVlusmD7November 20, 2024
The Reddit Status account confirmed that Reddit is down but that they are working on the issue.
The Status page currently says that "This incident affects: reddit.com (Desktop Web, Mobile Web, Native Mobile Apps, Comment Processing, Spam Processing)."
Basically everything.
Outage dips slightly
For us, the Reddit page still shows as down with upstream connect error.
Though we've been able to intermittently access the page.
A Reddit spokesperson told us that they are looking into the issue but did not have more to share at this time.
Over on Down Detector, the outage has dip from a peak of 48,000 plus reports to around 33,000 reports. Meanwhile, X and Bluesky are seeing multiple reports of the outage from confused users.
Reddit still down
While the Down Detector outage reports seems to be steadily declining, Reddit appears to remain down.
For awhile we were able to kind of get on the site and even logged into a couple different accounts.
However, we are only getting the upstream error now.
The Reddit status page remains the same reporting "degraded" performance.
Other social sites experience issues today
Reddit isn't the only platform that has seen problems today. Which still says Server error in a red bar across the top of the feed, even if you can get it to load.
Earlier in the morning, Venmo briefly went down for about an hour with users unable to access the app or the website. Venmo appears to be back up as of this writing.
At the same time Reddit started experiencing issues, the newer social media platform Bluesky also started to receive outage reports. Though that outage appears to have been quickly resolved.
The shambolic entity that is X appears to be working fine.
Coming back?
Reddit may be slowly coming back online.
The main Reddit social accounts and status have not changed.
However, we were able to successfully respond to a post in the r/boardgames subreddit. We haven't tested making a post yet, but the comment appeared to go through.
Though we are still getting the server error red bar, so Humpty Dumpty hasn't totally been put back together.
Down Detector has steeply declined to just under 15,000 reports. We are still seeing complaints on X and Bluesky.
Reddit Responds and bug in the system
Just now, a Reddit spokesperson responded to Tom's Guide about the outage.
We were told, "There was a bug in a recent update we made, but a fix is in place and we're ramping back up."
We've asked the spokesperson how long they expect until Reddit is fully back up and running normal.
They did not provide details on what the bug was or how it affected the platform.
No timeline for full return
Reddit responded to our inquiry about a timeline.
For us, the site appears to be sort of back up but it is lagging and occasionally stopping.
"The teams are working on it but we don't have a timeline to share," a spokesperson said.
The latest from DownDetector
Looking at DownDetector just before 6 p.m. ET, there was a second spike of outage reports just a little while ago, after initial reports of the Reddit outage appeared to be dying down. Those new reports are tailing off, too, but it's something to keep an eye if service doesn't get fully restored.
Reddit Alternatives
We're still getting Reddit down pages when logging in. With that in mind here are a couple of Reddit replacements while you wait for it to return.
Reddit is such a unique animal in the internet world that no one other site really captures all of its moods, but these five or so will nearly get you there.
Imgur - For your gif and pic needs, Imgur is already where most images on Reddit are hosted or linked from. Why not go straight to the source?
Commentary - X still exists, for whatever that's worth. Bluesky is seemingly the hot new spot for commentary and funny "skeets." You can try either if you're looking for some information and just following niches.
News - Yes, many people use Reddit for news but Google News still exists and is a pretty good repository in its own right of what's happening around the world. Like undersea internet cables getting cut.
Questions and answers - Quora might be the closest thing you can get to a Reddit-esque experience of asking a question and getting 2000 wrong answers couple with a few correct ones. And it been redesigned lately to give it more of a Reddit feel.
Chat/Forum- For following along with specific niches, talking with friends and acting as a forum replacement (please don't replace forums with Discord), Discord will get you 90% of the way to a Reddit experience.
Reddit Outage may be winding down
pic.twitter.com/4YjwVdWRKONovember 20, 2024
Reddit has had at least two other outages this year with one that affected not only Reddit but also large swaths of the internet in August. A previous one occurred in April, though that appeared less severe than the current issue.
The main Reddit X account posted the above tweet meme. They added "sorry sorry sorry" soon after. Though it's not clear if this means that Reddit is actually back up.
The Status page still lists a degraded performance.
Down Detector has been in a steady decline since the sudden peak at 2:30 PM Pacific. Currently it's finally under 1,500 reports since it hit a nearly 50,000 peak at 12:30 P.M. Pacific.
The site has been struggling for nearly four hours as of this posting.
Myself and several Tom's Guide colleagues are able to load Reddit on mobile and the desktop. Though, I have seen sluggish performance with posts loading slowly or comments taking a minute to actually appear.
Outage appears (mostly) resolved
As of this writing, 4:20 P.M. Pacific, it appears that the major Reddit outage has mostly been resolved.
We still don't know what bug was introduced in an update as Reddit claims.
Down Detector shows less than 1,000 reports now and continuously dropping. The site appears stable on the website and the app. Though, this writer is still getting the red error bar. Perhaps that's just a function that the engineers have not yet turned off.
Performance is still listed as degraded on the Redditstatus.com page.
But for the most part, the site seems usable and you can login, post, and comment
