Reddit Goes Down For Emergency Maintenance, Users Up In Arms
Reddit went down on Wednesday afternoon, with the popular link and image-sharing website displaying a note telling visitors that “emergency maintenance” had forced the site to go down.
The site offered a bit more information about the hiccup, saying on its official Twitter page that the problems were the result of its memcache servers.
Identified: One of our memcache servers is having problems right now http://t.co/ZyPmaamB4X
— reddit status (@redditstatus) March 4, 2015
The situation caused a bit of panic among visitors, with many commenting about reddit going down on Twitter and Facebook.
reddit is down. raise the pitchforks
— Vicious Vice (@ViciousVice) March 4, 2015
Reddit is down. I repeat: Reddit is down. I don’t know how to spend the next 45 seconds of my life.
— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) March 4, 2015
Reddit noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
— FRANK (@Lucahjin) March 4, 2015
Reddit is down, R.I.P.
— Anders Blume (@OnFireAnders) March 4, 2015
Productivity at work does not go up when Reddit is down for maintenance. Everyone just spends more time hitting refresh.
— Alex (@alexpenn) March 4, 2015
Though it was difficult for many when reddit went down, the situation did not last long. Within 20 minutes, the site updated users that it was back online.
FYI: We’re back. Please return your cursors to the upvoting position. pic.twitter.com/oUSfjsMAlo
— reddit (@reddit) March 4, 2015
This is not the only news that reddit has been making lately. The site recently enacted a policy that if anyone informs the site that their naked pictures were on the site without their permission, they would be taken down.
In a message announcing the decision, reddit’s administrators appeared to make reference to the nude picture leak of stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton.
“Last year, we missed a chance to be a leader in social media when it comes to protecting your privacy — something we’ve cared deeply about since reddit’s inception. At our recent all hands company meeting, this was something that we all, as a company, decided we needed to address.
No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on reddit without your permission, it is prohibited on reddit. We also recognize that violent personalized images are a form of harassment that we do not tolerate and we will remove them when notified. As usual, the revised Privacy Policy will go into effect in two weeks, on March 10, 2015.”
But the reddit policy was met with anger from many users, who saw it as an unfair infringement.