Reddit Blocked by China's Great Firewall
August 2018
In August 2018 Reddit became inaccessible in mainland China, joining Google, Facebook, and Twitter behind the Great Firewall, with the platform remaining blocked into the 2020s.
What happened
Around August 11–12, 2018, users in mainland China reported that both the Reddit website and app had stopped loading. The block placed Reddit alongside Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among major Western platforms inaccessible behind China's Great Firewall. Chinese authorities did not publicly state a specific trigger for the decision.
While some earlier reports had claimed a block as early as 2015, users disputed that and the site remained reachable, with only periodic, temporary disruptions thereafter. The August 2018 block, by contrast, proved durable and has effectively persisted, making Reddit reliably accessible in China only via VPNs.
The block is notable in Reddit's governance history because it underscored the platform's status as a largely uncensored, user-driven discussion site incompatible with China's content-control regime — a structural conflict rather than a response to any single piece of content. The episode later took on added irony given Tencent's 2019 investment in Reddit.
Impact
Cut Reddit off from the world's largest internet user base, reinforcing its identification with open, lightly moderated discourse that authoritarian censorship systems treat as a threat.