Social media giant Reddit – known as the “front page of the internet” – is now back up after suffering a major technical outage. The disruption occurred on Wednesday afternoon, leaving users across the globe unable to access its services. The outage is the latest in a long line for Reddit, which has experienced several technical disruptions in recent months. Earlier this year, the platform faced a similar issue on Election Day in the US, when degraded performance left users struggling to access the site for hours.
The newest outage at the social media platform began at nearly 3 PM ET and continued to persist for several hours, sparking widespread frustration among the platform’s millions of daily users. Both the desktop site and mobile applications were affected, with error messages and connectivity issues reported in high numbers. This ensured that users were unable to post, comment, or scroll across Reddit’s collection of discussion boards. If you had tried to access Reddit yesterday, then you will have encountered a message that reads “Upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. Reset reason: connection failure.”
If you were using a smartphone, then the Reddit app displayed the platform’s iconic dead Snoo mascot, indicating a complete breakdown in service. Downdetector – the website that tracks outages – recorded a peak of nearly 49,000 user complaints within the first hour of the incident, when the online service disruption was at its peak. Thousands of reports gradually poured in from the US, Australia, and the UK, among other regions – there were around 14,575 reports as of 4.32 PM ET. As is the norm for outages, frustrated users took to social media platforms to air their grievances.
Reddit later responded to the disruption, taking to popular microblogging platform X to keep users informed. Shortly after 4 p.m. ET, the company acknowledged the issue and confirmed that its technical teams were actively working to resolve the issue and bring the platform back online.
Yes. We're working on it. https://t.co/8MZVlusmD7
— Reddit, Inc. (@Reddit) November 20, 2024
By 4:45 PM ET, Reddit stated that a fix had been implemented and that services were gradually being restored. The company later revealed that the disruption was caused by a bug introduced in a recent software update. The exact details of the bug were not revealed, though it appeared to have affected Reddit’s backend systems, causing widespread connectivity problems. By 7:35 PM ET, Reddit announced that its platform was back up, though some users reported lingering issues such as slow loading times and intermittent errors.
