Reddit was down – the popular discussion platform had a huge outage

20 Nov 2024, 21:24 · TechRadar

Reddit was down – the popular discussion platform had a huge outage

Here's what happened

News By Lance Ulanoff last updated 20 November 2024

(Image: © Future)

Reddit suffered a major outage on Wednesday, plunging its millions of devoted users into discussion darkness, with no place to drop their hot takes, memes, and AMA.

As of 5:21PM ET, the popular discussion platform appeared to be returning to normal.

Down Detector indicated that the worst of the outage reports were over, with its fever chart heading south.

Reddit now says a bug in a recent update was the culprit.

Here's everything that happened, though we still await details from Reddit on why the platform went down in the first place.

Refresh 2024-11-20T23:41:30.418Z

Oh, Reddit. Even when you're down, you know how to reach us.

The discussion platform appears almost fully healed and Reddit has been mostly mum about the cause except for a brief comment from a spokesperson. Now, though, we have the "full story" and in completely Reddit fashion.

In truth, it's just a post on X, but it's also quite brilliant, being both a meme and an explanation. Reddit's X's post says the cause was a bug in a recent update that's now been fixed. Reddit is ramping back up. Next to it the explanation, though, is an image from a classic Real Housewives meme. That is just so Reddit.

Welcome back, Reddit, and thanks for keeping it saucy.

2024-11-20T22:36:41.302Z

Hold on a second. Just as Reddit appeared to be truly recovering, we saw a new and far more dire message when we tried to access Reddit.com

A CDN going down or being unable to communicate with servers is far more serious and could indicate some kind of backbone outage. Reddit is a big system and probably needs a lot of back-end server support to keep delivering all those hot memes. Some part of that infrastructure could be down.

Our colleagues over at Tom's Guide got this statement from Reddit: "The teams are working on it but we don't have a timeline to share."

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T22:20:23.723Z

The platform is healing. From the looks of things, Reddit is returning to form. It's still a bit slow and there are those occasional big, red issue bars but we're seeing more and more complete pages without that blemish. Some of them are even loading quickly.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T22:11:46.229Z

In the first sign of truly good news, Reddit's crucial Popular subreddit returned, though not without the big, red error bar. We, however, consider this progress. Full Reddit and posting should be back in no time and then we can all get back to laughing at silly road and store signs and cats telling us ironically to "hang in there."

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T22:07:15.428Z

Reddit's last public comment on the outage was on X (formerly Twitter) in response to someone asking if Reddit was down. They posted, "We're working on it."

2024-11-20T22:04:14.646Z

Perhaps we spoke too soon. As of 5:00PM ET, Reddit's homepage was again mostly empty. The error message at the top is now the most interesting thing to read. Reddit has not updated its status report since 3:38PM ET.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:59:57.842Z

Reddit's Popular section remains mostly down and while the other subreddits are live, Reddit's response time when you click on any of them is quite slow. This is still not the Reddit you know and love.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:56:34.675Z

If Down Detector is any measure, Reddit appears to recovering. It's obviously not out of the woods yet and Reddit's status page has yet to show an update, but all signs point to an imminent return to normal Reddit up- and down-voting.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:53:03.596Z

Some parts of Reddit appear to be performing normally except for this annoying error message banner that appears at the top of almost every page. It's another sign that all is not well in Reddit Land.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:50:49.097Z

Even upstart social media platform Bluesky was paying attention though it, too, was suffering through a series of small outages on Wednesday. There is no indication they are connected. Bluesky keeps going down because of its sudden and almost unprecedented popularity.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:46:07.270Z

As is usually the case, people on other social media platforms are enjoying a little schadenfreude over Reddit's ongoing problems.

Post by @davedigscars View on Threads

2024-11-20T21:42:36.606Z

While the function for adding a new Reddit post appears, the system is still reporting multiple errors, and ultimately nothing gets posted. Guess all those anxious Reddit users will have to head over to Discord to post updates.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:38:47.935Z

As of 4:36PM ET, Reddit's homepage was failing again. Clearly, the issue, whatever it is, is significant enough that Reddit's developers are likely playing a game of whackamole with critical failures.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:35:46.113Z

While the Reddit homepage appears to be sort of functional, Reddit's own status checker is reporting degraded performance for most of its services. No word, yet, on what's causing the issues. and, yes, "popular" remains offline.

(Image credit: Future)

2024-11-20T21:31:56.382Z

Today, perhaps coincidentally, was also the day of US News Anchor Katie Couric's first-ever Reddit AMA. It launched at 2PM ET, though we're not pointing any fingers.