Reddit experienced a global outage on Tuesday, affecting thousands of users who were unable to load feeds, log in to the service, or access posts. The issue persisted on both the website and mobile app for several hours before the company was able to restore services.
According to Downdetector, more than 20,000 outage reports were filed in the United States alone, with users in India, the UK, and Australia also reporting widespread access issues. Almost half of the complaints were related to the website, while others suggested failures within both the mobile app and the website.
In a brief update, Reddit said that it was ‘aware of increased error rates’ and had begun investigating. A few hours later, the company confirmed the issue had been identified and a fix was being rolled out.
Reddit blamed a bug in a recent backend update for the disruption. The company denied any kind of cyberattack or data breach, but the episode again highlighted the fragility of online platforms.
Industry analysts said the incident highlights the risks of overreliance on cloud infrastructure and the need for rapid software updates. Similar outages, linked to cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, have occurred in recent months.
As Reddit feeds went black, frustrated users took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to post memes and complaints under the hashtag #RedditDown. Some moderators and content creators temporarily moved their communities onto Discord and other alternative platforms in an effort to keep discussions alive.
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The outage comes at an inconvenient time for Reddit, which is launching AI-powered features and preparing for its long-anticipated IPO. Although the interruption was short, it still serves as a reminder of the extent to which online communities have come to depend on the smooth operation of a handful of global platforms, and how fragile that digital dependence can be.