Millions of Reddit users in the US, Australia, and other countries faced a frustrating outage on Wednesday, as the popular message board-style platform experienced a significant disruption.
The outage began just before 3 PM ET, with users encountering error messages such as, “Upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. Reset reason: connection failure,”
Widespread Impact
Downdetector, a platform that monitors online service disruptions, reported over 47,000 outage complaints at the peak around 3:30 PM ET. While it was unclear which countries were affected initially, Australian users voiced widespread frustration, and reports also surfaced from the UK and other regions.
By 5:20 PM ET, the number of outage reports had decreased to around 32,000 but remained significant.
Response and Resolution
At approximately 4 PM ET, Reddit acknowledged the issue on X (formerly Twitter), confirming that their team was working on a solution. By 4:45 PM, a Reddit spokesperson informed UKNIP that a fix was in place and the platform was gradually restoring service.
The company later attributed the outage to a “bug in a recent update.” By 8 PM ET, the number of outage reports had dropped to around 400, indicating that the issue was nearing resolution.
In a statement Reddit said:
“There was a bug in a recent update we made, but a fix is in place and we’re ramping back up.”
A Recurring Issue
This outage follows a similar disruption on Election Day in the US earlier this year when Reddit experienced “degraded performance.” That issue was resolved after several hours.
Reddit’s Growth and Challenges
As one of the world’s top 10 most-visited websites, Reddit boasts 73 million daily users, according to its latest reports. The San Francisco-based company went public in March 2024 and achieved profitability in October for the first time since becoming publicly traded.
Despite its growth, the platform has faced periodic technical challenges, underscoring the complexity of maintaining stability for such a large user base.
Users React
Many users took to other social media platforms to share their frustrations during the outage, with memes and jokes about Reddit’s downtime trending on X.
As the platform recovers, Reddit users are hopeful for improved stability to prevent similar disruptions in the future.
