AWS Outage Triggers Global Internet Disruption: Is Reddit Still Down and What You Need to Know?
In an unprecedented wave of digital disruption, a major outage impacting Amazon Web Services (AWS) sent shockwaves across the internet, leading to widespread chaos and user frustration. As numerous online platforms grappled with technical difficulties, popular social aggregation site Reddit found itself in the midst of this pandemonium, with users reporting significant problems accessing and utilizing the platform.
Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant that underpins a vast portion of the modern internet, experienced a massive outage today, October 20, 2025. This critical service disruption initiated a severe domino effect, bringing down or significantly impairing a multitude of online platforms and digital services globally. From financial applications like Venmo to communication tools such as Snapchat, internet users across various sectors complained of experiencing severe problems loading their accounts, completing transactions, or simply accessing essential features. As Amazon’s technical teams worked tirelessly throughout the day to resolve the complex issue, the ramifications were felt far and wide, with even Reddit users joining the chorus of complaints regarding difficulties using their beloved platform.
The incident underscored the profound reliance the digital world places on a handful of powerful cloud providers like AWS. When these foundational services falter, the ripple effect can be catastrophic, impacting everything from major corporations to individual users attempting to browse their favorite sites. This article aims to provide a comprehensive update on Reddit’s status amidst the widespread AWS outage, delving into the extent of the disruption, its underlying causes, and the broader implications for internet users and service providers alike.
Below, get an updated and detailed analysis on whether or not Reddit is back up and running for users amid the widespread AWS outage, and explore the broader context of this significant internet downtime.
Is Reddit Still Down Today? Understanding the Ongoing Impact
For a significant portion of its global user base, the answer remained a frustrating “yes.” According to real-time outage tracking provided by Downdetector, Reddit was still not functioning correctly for many people well into the day. The peak of reported issues occurred at approximately 6:00 a.m. ET, indicating a sudden and widespread onset of problems. While reports of outages did show a gradual decrease throughout the day as AWS engineers worked diligently on recovery, a substantial number of customers continued to voice their complaints by 3:00 p.m. ET, indicating that their Reddit accounts were still exhibiting glitches, errors, or complete inaccessibility. The persistence of these issues highlights the complexity of restoring services dependent on large-scale cloud infrastructure after a major incident.
Users experienced a variety of problems, ranging from minor inconveniences to complete inability to use core functionalities. Login failures were common, locking many out of their accounts entirely. For those who managed to get online, loading content became a significant hurdle; posts wouldn’t appear, images failed to load, and video playback was non-existent. Commenting and posting new content proved equally challenging, with submissions often failing or disappearing into the digital ether. The platform’s direct messaging system, a vital tool for many communities, also suffered intermittent failures, further isolating users.
The frustration among users was palpable and widely shared across social media and, ironically, on Downdetector itself. “I just wanted to edit a comment, and now I’m incapable of doing literally anything except for DMing people,” one exasperated person commented on Downdetector, illustrating the limited functionality many were facing. Another person chimed in, perfectly capturing the visual aspect of the problem, writing, “Ugh, Reddit not working. My pictures on my posts are saying deleted,” suggesting data retrieval issues rather than actual content deletion.
A third user, perhaps sensing the broader implications of the cloud service failure, went so far as to comment, “While AWS is down, we’re all land-locked.” This sentiment powerfully encapsulated the feeling of digital isolation experienced by millions as vital internet services became inaccessible, making routine online activities impossible.
The situation underscored how deeply integrated cloud services are into our daily lives, transforming even seemingly minor platform issues into major disruptions for a global audience. The prolonged nature of Reddit’s problems, despite ongoing recovery efforts, demonstrated the challenges of restoring complex distributed systems.
Investigating: We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue. https://t.co/6IyHu46clb
— Reddit Status (@redditstatus) October 20, 2025
Why Was Reddit Not Working? The Cloud’s Domino Effect
Reddit seemingly wasn’t working for most of the day on October 20, 2025, primarily due to the widespread AWS outage. Like many modern online services, Reddit heavily relies on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services to host its servers, databases, and various operational components. This dependency means that when AWS experiences a significant disruption, its client services, including Reddit, are highly susceptible to outages. While Reddit had not publicly or explicitly pointed to the AWS issue as the sole cause at the time of these reports, the timing and widespread nature of the problems strongly indicated a direct correlation. It’s often the case that platforms wait for official confirmation or a clearer understanding of specific service degradation before making definitive public statements.
The underlying cause of AWS outages can vary, ranging from hardware failures, software bugs, network connectivity issues, to even human error during routine maintenance. In this particular incident, the exact technical root cause within AWS was still under investigation, but its impact was undeniably far-reaching. When core AWS services like EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (storage), or RDS (databases) experience issues, applications built on top of them can lose access to critical resources, leading to errors, slow performance, or complete downtime.
On its official Reddit Status X account (formerly Twitter), the platform acknowledged the issue at approximately 6:30 a.m. ET, shortly after the initial surge of user complaints. The concise message read: “Investigating: We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue.” This public statement served as confirmation for users that their problems were not isolated and that Reddit’s technical teams were actively working to diagnose and mitigate the impact of the incident. Such acknowledgments are crucial during widespread outages, providing reassurance to a frustrated user base and preventing speculation.
Reddit was far from alone in its struggles. Multiple platforms spanning various industries, including financial services like Venmo, communication apps such as Snapchat, productivity tools like Asana, and even smart home systems like the Ring Doorbell, all experienced significant errors and service interruptions today due to the same underlying AWS issue. This collective impact underscored the criticality of cloud infrastructure in today’s interconnected digital ecosystem. A single point of failure within a major cloud provider can indeed lead to a cascading failure across the internet, affecting millions of users and businesses globally.
Who Owns Reddit? A Glimpse into its Corporate Structure
Reddit, often hailed as “the front page of the internet,” operates under the ownership of Advance Publications. Advance Publications is a privately held American company that functions as the parent company of a vast media conglomerate, which includes notable entities such as Condé Nast. Condé Nast is a global mass media company known for publishing iconic magazines like Vogue, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, among others. While Reddit maintains a significant degree of operational independence, its ultimate ownership ties it to this larger media empire. This corporate backing provides Reddit with substantial resources and strategic guidance, enabling its continued growth and expansion in the competitive digital landscape. Over the years, Reddit has evolved from a niche platform to a mainstream social media powerhouse, attracting hundreds of millions of users monthly, and its value has soared, reflecting its importance in online culture and communication.
What Did the AWS Outage Affect? The Broader Digital Aftermath
The AWS outage of October 20, 2025, seemed to hit the entire internet with considerable force, demonstrating the sheer scale and interwoven nature of modern cloud computing infrastructure. While certain social media behemoths, notably Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, and Elon Musk‘s X.com (formerly Twitter), appeared to largely escape significant direct impact, the Amazon outage wreaked havoc on a vast array of other online services and critical infrastructure. The resilience of platforms like Facebook and X often comes from their distributed architecture, extensive proprietary data centers, and multi-cloud strategies, which can offer some insulation from single-provider failures.
However, for countless other entities, the situation was dire. Beyond the consumer-facing apps like Venmo and Snapchat, the disruption extended to enterprise-level services, affecting internal communication tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and various backend operations for businesses of all sizes. E-commerce sites, content streaming platforms, gaming services, and even everyday utility apps experienced considerable downtime or performance degradation. The outage highlighted a critical vulnerability in the digital economy: the concentration of essential internet services within a few large cloud providers.
Perhaps most concerning was the impact on essential services. Reports indicated that even sectors traditionally considered highly robust, such as banking and airlines, were affected. Bank customers might have faced difficulties accessing online banking portals, making digital payments, or performing transactions through mobile apps. Airlines, which heavily rely on digital systems for everything from flight tracking and booking to check-in processes and gate assignments, also reported disruptions, leading to potential delays and operational challenges. This far-reaching impact underscored that cloud service outages are no longer mere inconveniences but can pose significant threats to critical national infrastructure and economic stability.
The event serves as a stark reminder for businesses and organizations globally to evaluate their cloud strategies, implement robust redundancy measures, and potentially explore multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approaches to mitigate the risks associated with such widespread service disruptions in the future. As the internet becomes increasingly central to every aspect of life, the stability and resilience of its foundational cloud infrastructure are paramount.