Facebook and Instagram might be up for people around the world after a long outage, but for several people in India are not being able to access Reddit. However, that’s not because of a server outage. Several Reddit posts and reports suggest that telcos and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are blocking the site.
Today, MediaNama reported that telcos like Vodafone and Jio, and ISPs like YOU Broadband, Spectranet, and Jio Gigafiber have blocked Reddit in several Indian states. Plus, there are many threads in the last 24 hours on r/India subreddit indicating that Reddit has been inaccessible. TNW independently verified that the site was inaccessible on Vodafone network till this evening. We’ve emailed several service providers to learn more, and will update the story accordingly.
@redditindia Reddit India is not opening on Vodafone. Any issues? pic.twitter.com/X5VMrAuCKN
— Abinash Sahu (@abinash111) March 14, 2019
A week ago, several Redditors complained that an ISP named Hathway is blocking the popular website. The company gave no reasons, but unblocked the site later.
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This follows a recent ban by another ISP, Hathway, which blocked the popular website last week. Several Redditors complained about the blocking, which the company gave no reasons for, which led Hathway to unblock the site later.
As we pointed out during India’s porn ban last year, it’s easy to circumvent this block by using VPNs or proxies. But this blockage is certainly more bizarre as there has been no order from the authorities instructing ISPs and cell phone networks to ban Reddit. As we were writing this post, a lot of people were able to access the site again, but there’s still no explanation on why it was blocked in the first place.
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