Reddit’s web and mobile platforms are back online following a major service disruption on Wednesday afternoon that left over 150,000 users unable to access the site. The outage, which peaked around 1:30 p.m. PT in San Francisco, triggered widespread “Server error” messages for visitors across the globe.
The Root Cause: A Flawed Software Update
The company officially acknowledged the technical difficulties at 1:16 p.m. PT via its status page, categorizing the incident as a “degraded status.” After a brief period of investigation, Reddit engineers identified a recent software update as the primary culprit for the platform’s instability.
“Earlier today we shipped an update that unintentionally impacted platform stability,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt confirmed in an email statement. “We deployed a fix and are back up and running.”
Rapid Resolution and Service Restoration
By 2:16 p.m. PT, the company confirmed that the technical fix had been successfully implemented and the platform was fully operational. The outage was tracked extensively by users via Downdetector, which served as the primary hub for reports during the downtime.
While the service has officially returned to normal, Reddit noted that some users might experience minor residual connectivity issues as the platform fully reconciles. Services are expected to stabilize for all remaining users shortly.
A Rare Downtime Event
System reliability has been a strong point for the platform recently. According to official data, Reddit has experienced very few major outages of this magnitude over the past 90 days, making Wednesday’s software-related failure a notable anomaly in the site’s recent operational history.
