Community Site Experiencing Widespread Errors

UPDATED, 4:58 p.m. ET: Reddit, the internet’s popular discussion hub, encountered widespread outages and errors for nearly an hour Wednesday.

User reports of problems with Reddit spiked just before 4 p.m. ET on Aug. 28, when there were more than 76,000 error reports, according to monitoring site Downdetector. Error messages displayed on Reddit pages included “We have encountered an error. Please try again later” and “We were unable to load the content for this page.” The error reports on Downdetector indicated that the Reddit app was also experiencing problems.

A message posted on Reddit’s status page at 4:16 p.m. ET indicated “Degraded Performance for reddit.com” with a note that said “We are currently investigating this issue.” An update at 4:45 p.m. ET said that “A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results,” and access to the site and app was soon restored.

The company has experienced technical problems in the past, including a major outage in August of last year and a five-hour outage in March 2023. According to Reddit, there more than 100,000 active communities from around the world across the site, spanning numerous topics and interest areas.

Reddit launched an IPO this past March, raising $519 million. The company, once billed as “the front page of the internet,” reported 2023 revenue of $804.0 million, up 21% year over year, and a net loss of $90.8 million compared with a $158.6 million loss the year prior.

For the second quarter, Reddit said daily active uniques users increased 51% year-over-year to 91.2 million. It narrowed its net loss to $10.1 million (versus a net loss of $41.1 million in the prior-year quarter) while revenue rose 54% year-over-year to $281.2 million.

Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast in 2006 for $10 million, soon after it launched in 2005. In 2011, Condé Nast spun out the site, while parent Advance Publications retained a minority stake. Other investors in Reddit include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, China’s Tencent Holdings, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.