The San Francisco-based social media platform is a daily hub for news, discussions, and memes for millions of users. But in 2025, the social media site has faced a growing problem that’s impossible to ignore. Reddit Is Down again, with a December 9 outage marking the most recent major disruption for users across regions.
Below is a detailed look at what happened, why Reddit outages are increasing, and what this means for the future of the platform.
A Sudden Outage That Affected Thousands
Thousands were unable to access the app or website in an outage that hit Reddit on December 9, 2025. There was a huge spike in complaints recorded by DownDetector shortly after the issue began.
Here’s how users described the experience:
- 73 percent said the website would not load
- 22 percent faced server connection failures
- 5 percent reported that the mobile app froze or crashed
Many were met with blank feeds, failed page loads, or the now-familiar “Internal Server Error” message. What made the outage especially confusing was its uneven nature—while some users experienced total downtime, others managed to browse parts of the platform normally.
For a short time, Reddit’s official status page displayed “elevated errors,” indicating engineers were aware and investigating the issue. No detailed explanation was shared immediately.
2025 Has Seen a Pattern of Repeated Outages
This was not an isolated incident. Throughout 2025, Reddit has suffered a string of high-profile outages:
- April 21, 2025 — A database connection problem caused a global outage affecting more than 112,000 users. Services were restored within minutes, but the disruption was significant.
- March 27, 2025 — Over 33,000 users reported access issues after a backend bug, triggered by a recent update, caused widespread instability.
- November 2025 — Reddit went down globally for several hours, with many unable to log in or access the site at all.
These repeated disruptions underscore a troubling trend: Reddit appears to be struggling increasingly with stability—even as its user base and content volume grow rapidly.
What’s Behind These Frequent Outages
Several factors seem to be contributing to Reddit’s instability lately:
Rapid Growth and Increased Load
- In Q3 2025, Reddit announced revenues of $585 million—a 68 percent year-on-year surge. With more users, more content, and rising advertiser demand, the platform is under unprecedented traffic stress.
Rise in AI-Generated Content
- Moderators and researchers have flagged a surge in AI-generated posts, comments, and images.
- This influx of synthetic content—sometimes derisively called “AI slop”—increases the burden on moderators and places a greater load on Reddit’s infrastructure.
Technical Shifts in Content Delivery
- Reddit’s decision to phase out the enduring r/popular feed in favor of personalized home feeds adds backend complexity.
- Delivering personalized content often means heavier computing and data-delivery requirements, which may contribute to system instability.
Frequent Backend Updates
- Several outages in 2025 have been linked to bugs from recent updates.
- This suggests that rapid feature rollout may be compromising overall site stability.
Global Impact—What Users Experienced
India, one of Reddit’s fastest-growing markets, was also affected by the December outage. This came at a sensitive time—Reddit has been expanding its India operations, offering Hindi translations, and opening new offices.
Worldwide, many users saw their real-time discussion threads disrupted, major subreddits becoming temporarily inaccessible, and login attempts failing. Users turned to platforms like X to check if the outage was global—where they encountered memes, jokes, and widespread frustration instead of answers.
Reddit’s Reliability Problem Is Getting Serious
As Reddit positions itself to become a “go-to search engine” powered by community wisdom and AI, reliability is becoming a critical concern. Frequent outages threaten to erode user trust and could drive loyal users away toward alternative platforms.
The December outage may not be the last one where Reddit Is Down in 2025. For Reddit, the central question now is this: Can the platform keep pace with its own growth without breaking down?
