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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Ben Wilson

Is Reddit down? AWS outages are mitigating, but the social media giant is still half-busted

Reddit Blackout.

8:55 AM ET: Reddit is operational again, but not at full capacity. A fix is being monitored, and most functions have returned.

A significant chunk of the web went dark this Monday morning, as AWS downtime took most of the internet with it. Productivity apps like Zoom, Slack, and even popular games like Fortnite and Palworld were offline, or at least partially broken, as Amazon's server platform responsible for hosting the apps, services, and platforms suffered severe errors and outages originating from the East Coast of the United States.

The official AWS Service health page reported "significant signs of recovery," but its status shifted between "degraded" and "impacted", with the globally popular social media giant Reddit seemingly among the worst affected. The platform's home page, several of its subreddits, and even individual posts are regularly reporting a "too many requests" error message.

"Your request has been rate limited" isn't a particularly unique error, as it can be a legitimate response to users who have (even accidentally) flooded Reddit's servers, but this time, it's almost certainly related to Amazon's server downtime. The official Reddit Status page explains how its servers are "experiencing Issues with Reddit Infrastructure" despite a 100% uptime report — so the servers are up, they just aren't working properly.

Troubleshooting Windows 11 and its apps can often lead users to Reddit, with varying degrees of success. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

It hardly needed any introduction, but Reddit nevertheless stands as one of the most popular "forums" for like-minded hobbyists, dedicated experts, and everything in between. Of course, that includes Windows users, and popular subreddits including r/Windows are out for the count.

Naturally, we have a gigantic collection of Windows 11 guides that answer practically every question and offer fixes for the most common bugs users might experience on their PC. However, Reddit remains a fantastic measuring stick for the popular consensus on Microsoft's operating system and everything connected to it.

Be honest — how many times have you ended a web search query with "reddit" in an attempt to find a more human angle? I get it, I do the same thing. Now that Reddit is down, it becomes even clearer how much of the web is AI-centric, with auto-generated summaries (often reportedly scraped from Reddit itself) and diversions away from genuine content. Still, Reddit recognizes the "elevated level of errors" and claims to be looking into the issue.

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