Reddit, the popular online discussion hub, experienced widespread outages and errors on Wednesday.
User reports of issues with Reddit spiked just before 4 p.m. ET on August 28, when there were more than 76,000 bug reports, according to monitoring site Downdetector. Error messages displayed on Reddit pages included “We encountered an error. Please try again later” and “We were unable to load the content for this page.” Bug reports on Downdetector indicated that the Reddit app was also experiencing issues.
A message posted on Reddit's status page at 4:16 p.m. ET indicated “performance degradation on reddit.com” with a note saying “Investigation underway – We are currently investigating this issue.” An update at 4:32 p.m. ET stated that “the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.”
The company has faced technical issues in the past, including a major outage in August of last year and a five-hour outage in March 2023. According to Reddit, there are more than 100,000 active communities from around the world on the site, covering a wide range of topics and areas of interest.
Reddit launched an IPO last March, raising $519 million. The company, once known as the “front page of the internet,” reported revenue of $804.0 million in 2023, up 21% year over year, and a net loss of $90.8 million compared to a loss of $158.6 million the year before.
In the second quarter, Reddit said daily active users rose 51% year-over-year to 91.2 million. The company also narrowed its net loss to $10.1 million (versus a net loss of $41.1 million in the previous quarter) while revenue rose 54% year-over-year to $281.2 million.
Condé Nast acquired Reddit in 2006 for $10 million, shortly after its launch in 2005. In 2011, Condé Nast split the site, while parent company 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.
