Reddit experienced a widespread outage on Wednesday afternoon, with over 150,000 users reporting issues accessing the site as of 1:30 p.m. PT. When attempting to load Reddit’s homepage, users encountered a “Server error. Try again later” message.
According to Reddit’s status page, the company reported a “degraded status” for Reddit.com starting at 1:16 p.m. PT. However, by around 2:16 p.m., Reddit announced that its systems were back online after implementing a fix. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt stated in an email, “Earlier today we shipped an update that unintentionally impacted platform stability.
We deployed a fix and are back up and running.”
Over the past 90 days, Reddit has experienced very few major outages, as indicated by its status page.
Reddit outage causes user disruptions
While some users may still face difficulties accessing the platform, the company assured that services should be fully restored shortly.
Reddit, often referred to as “the front page of the internet,” is home to over 100,000 active communities from around the world, covering a wide range of topics and interests. In 2023, Reddit reported revenue of $804 million, a 21% increase from the previous year, with a net loss of $90.8 million compared to a $158.6 million loss the year before. During the second quarter, daily active unique users grew by 51% year-over-year to 91.2 million, while revenue increased by 54% to $281.2 million.
Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast in 2006 for $10 million and later spun out in 2011, with Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications, retaining a minority stake. Other investors in Reddit include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, China’s Tencent Holdings, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. This outage is one of several similar incidents in recent months, where users have encountered difficulties accessing the site due to back-end issues.
Despite these technical challenges, Reddit remains a crucial hub for internet forums, with an initial valuation of $6.5 billion.
