The outage began at approximately 11:20 am ET on Monday, with Reddit acknowledging the issue on its status page, stating they were "investigating elevated errors across reddit.com and the apps."12 By 12:21 pm ET, just about an hour after the initial reports, Reddit updated the status page to confirm that all systems were operational and the outage had been resolved.13

During the incident, Reddit's communication was minimal but effective. The company posted on X (formerly Twitter) that they were investigating the situation and later implemented a fix, monitoring the results until full service was restored.45 Despite having a comprehensive status page with detailed component statuses for different services like Desktop Web, Mobile Web, and Native Mobile Apps, Reddit didn't provide specific details about what caused the outage.6 This lack of transparency has been criticized by some users in the past, with one Reddit post questioning "What is the point of having a status page if your support staff doesn't update it when you have an outage?"7

Downdetector operates as a real-time problem monitoring platform that tracks service outages through crowd-sourced data collection methods. The system aggregates user-submitted reports, social media mentions, and web information to identify when online services are experiencing disruptions12. When users encounter issues with websites, apps, or telecommunications services, they can report these problems directly through Downdetector's website or mobile app, which are then analyzed against a baseline of typical problem reports to determine if an actual outage is occurring13.

The platform's strength lies in its comprehensive approach to outage detection, featuring interactive heat maps showing geographic concentration of issues4, service-specific status pages for thousands of monitored services across 45+ countries5, and real-time analytics that can identify outages before a company's internal monitoring tools detect problems6. For businesses, Downdetector offers enterprise solutions that provide early alerting, customizable notifications, and API integration options to help network operations teams troubleshoot issues faster and improve customer experience during service disruptions67.

In June and August 2024, Windows users reported recurring Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) errors following system updates. Users on Microsoft forums and Reddit noted that after June updates, systems experienced consistent blue screens, with some users reporting that even safe mode became inaccessible following August updates.12 Additionally, security researchers from Fortra identified a vulnerability (CVE-2024-6768) in Windows' common log file system that can trigger the blue screen on all versions of Windows 10 and 11, potentially allowing malicious actors to cause repeated crashes and data loss.3

The most significant recent BSOD incident occurred on July 19, 2024, when millions of Windows users worldwide experienced simultaneous crashes due to a faulty CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor update.45 This global outage affected critical infrastructure including airlines, banks, stock markets, and telecommunications services across the US, Australia, Japan, India, and other countries, causing flight cancellations and widespread service disruptions.67 Microsoft confirmed the CrowdStrike update as the root cause, with affected systems displaying recovery messages stating "Windows didn't load correctly" or the classic blue error screen.45