Hey everyone. If you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy!

  • Scrubbles
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    1922 years ago

    Reddit has been going through some issues for many on Monday, with the outage happening the same day as thousands of subreddits going dark to protest the site’s new API pricing terms.

    According to Reddit, the blackout is responsible for the problems. “A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge.

        • SSUPII
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          962 years ago

          Maybe some overload caused by a process having to dig deeper to find best/top posts?

              • @aponigricon@beehaw.org
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                222 years ago

                You’d be surprised how much critical infrastructure was implemented through trial and error and has just been left like that for years…

                • sickmatter
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                  122 years ago

                  Anything less than 99% of infrastructure working that way would be surprising. Everything is held together with scotch tape and scotch whisky.

          • @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyi
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            232 years ago

            I like this idea. I imagine that with the top subs being dark the automated top posts that get scrounged up may be too terrifying for the front page and they hit the panic button while they scramble to curate through the absolute worst filth they’ve ever seen.

        • Grizzzlay
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          702 years ago

          “It’s merely coincidence. But starting Wednesday, our servers will be more robust and you can browse the site using our official app.” - Spez, while sniffing a decanter of human shit

          • 10EXP
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            122 years ago

            God we need indefinite blackouts.

        • femboy_link.mp4
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          432 years ago

          It’s entirely possible that they’ve made some assumptions about what a “normal” level of traffic looks like when writing code for their backend, which has caused some things to break when that has changed.

          Not our fault if their code is shit.

            • femboy_link.mp4
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              102 years ago

              Honestly, it’s probably not - if I’m actually right this is likely an issue that Reddit’s engineers never predicted would happen so never planned for it. I was being hyperbolic.

            • sickmatter
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              62 years ago

              It’s not reactive. A proper reactive system can handle fluctuations in usage patterns more robustly.

      • @ApathyMoose@beehaw.org
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        312 years ago

        Want Free API? Straight to down status.

        Want cheaper API? Also straight to down status

        Not enough people on Reddit because of protests? Also straight to down status

      • @CelebrationMassive87@slrpnk.net
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        122 years ago

        This comment is so good an upvote won’t do justice (without awards, a classic comment such as this now has some merit… it’s a new day boys & girls, a good day)

        • femboy_link.mp4
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          122 years ago

          If Beehaw offered awards I would actually buy them, at least the money would be going towards keeping the lights on for a project that isn’t actively trying to screw over users for profit.

      • jay
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        32 years ago

        thank you, this comment made my day

        • @mizmoose@beehaw.org
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          142 years ago

          Reddit has an annual “moderator summit”, a rah! rah! yay for moderators! event for moderators, mostly of large or super large subreddits.

          At last year’s summit, Spez gave his ‘keynote’ talk where among other things he claimed that they were researching ways to pay moderators for their work, by giving them a cut of … something. It was all sort of wonky and nebulous and likely just something he thought of that morning in the shower.

        • @setsneedtofeed@beehaw.org
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          112 years ago

          If the volunteer mods hold their ground and force Reddit corporate to oust them, Reddit would need to step in to fill the void.

          • AggressivelyPassive
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            122 years ago

            They’ll find some people.

            The reality is, not having (good enough) mods will take a while to really hurt the bottom line. Subs will slowly deteriorate.

            But I’m 100% sure, within a few weeks you can establish a new order of more servile mods.

            • TechyDad
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              82 years ago

              People on Reddit complain about the mods enough as it is. (And I include myself in that. I’ve had some less than stellar mod encounters in the past.) However, if Reddit were to force out existing mods and replace them with mods willing to toe the company line (and possibly ban people for mentioning the blackout, complaining about Reddit, or mentioning alternatives), it would just result in more user dissatisfaction.

              Reddit won’t go out overnight. There are too many people who post there. However, this could turn into a snowball effect. Rebelling mods are replaced by bootlickers. Dissent is crushed in order to make it seem like everything is hunky dory before the IPO. Power users flee to alternatives like Lemmy. Slowly, normal users hear that some of their favorite content is on this new service and sign up. Reddit usage drops little by little until it’s limping around as a shell of its former self.

    • @Crotaro@beehaw.org
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      242 years ago

      Whatever causes the website to have trouble, I’m all for it, right now.

      I already wondered if I got lightning-banned for sending too many API requests in a short time, when I used a script to auto-edit all my comments and text-posts.

    • @chaorace
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      92 years ago

      Ah, “expected”, such a wonderful word! They expected for their infrastructure to explode, just according to keikaku

    • @Luvs2Spuj@beehaw.org
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      82 years ago

      A significant number. Fantastic. I’m not sure I believe the stability issues, I’m just a a tin foil hat kind of guy though. I guess it’s possible.

      • @democracy1984@lemmy.world
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        12 years ago

        Reddit didn’t design their systems around needing to deal with a huge number of subs going private all at the same time. It’s not surprising that it caused a short outage.

    • @LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue.

      My hypothesis is that it’s probably because so much of Reddit posting is automated by their own bot network now that they DDOS’d themselves trying to auto-post to subs that are suddenly locked. Like they didn’t even bother tracking which subs would be blacking out and like…write exceptions to their post schedule.

    • @ProcurementCat@feddit.de
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      12 years ago

      I bet their shitty bots intended to inflate comments and content couldn’t be switched off in time for the blackouts, still sending requests and DDoS’ing their own site.