Two of the world's most prominent social media platforms, Reddit and X, were hit by a significant and widespread service disruption on Wednesday, leaving millions of users unable to access their services.
Platforms Grind to a Halt
The problems began around 10am Eastern Time (3pm UK time), with users across the globe suddenly finding themselves locked out. The outage affected both the mobile applications and the desktop versions of the sites, indicating a major backend failure rather than a localised issue.
Frustrated users quickly turned to other channels to report the problems and seek information, with many confirming the intermittent access issues persisted even as initial reports began to subside.
Scale of the Disruption Revealed
The true scale of the outage was captured by Downdetector, the popular online service that tracks real-time problem reports. At the peak of the disruption, the site recorded a staggering volume of user complaints.
According to the data, more than 67,000 outage reports were filed for Reddit, dwarfing the usual background level of issues. For X, formerly known as Twitter, the site received over 25,000 reports from users unable to refresh timelines, post, or use core features.
This combined total of over 90,000 reports highlights the severity of the incident and its impact on a vast user base.
Ongoing Issues and User Impact
While the initial flood of reports has decreased, both platforms were still experiencing intermittent issues for a considerable period after the outage began. This pattern suggests engineers were working to implement a fix but that service restoration was not instantaneous or uniform for all users.
Such widespread tech disruptions immediately spark concerns about server stability, potential cyber incidents, or problems with underlying infrastructure. For platforms reliant on real-time communication and content sharing, even short outages can cause significant disruption to communities, news dissemination, and business operations.
This remains a developing story, and further updates on the root cause of the outage are expected to follow from the companies involved.
