• nulldev@lemmy.vepta.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.

    How in the world does setting a bunch of subs to private crash the website?

    • fireshaper@fedia.io
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      2 years ago

      Someone on Tilde posted that they used to work for Reddit and the way they have the front page set up to pull your subscribed subreddits and the ones that you might like to read from is spaghetti code and very brittle.

        • azertyfun@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 years ago

          Reddit has had extremely spotty reliability forever. It got better in recent years, but still came down every few weeks, or would just randomly say “you broke reddit!”. Circa 2015 every evening it would just randomly return 50x errors a good chunk of the time because it was always overloaded.

          Backend reliability mustn’t be very high up their priority list. Well, neither is UX (old OR new reddit), and let’s not pretend that they’ve been masterminds when it comes to ad placement either, so the real question is what do the higher ups want, and why can’t they achieve it?

          • Clegko@beehaw.org
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            2 years ago

            the real question is what do the higher ups want, and why can’t they achieve it?

            They want money, and they’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas.

          • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
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            2 years ago

            Honestly even this year it hasn’t been super reliable, even before any of this. Stability has never really been a top priority for them.

    • andrew@radiation.party
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      2 years ago

      High-scale software is complex, sometimes there are edge cases where weird unexpected stuff happens. This isn’t a situation they would normally run into.

      • CycliCynic@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        It absolutely is something they would normally run into. I work on maintaining a massive application; think 60+ teams of 6, each extremely specialized and minimal overlap. Almost 75% of my job is predicting issues and avoiding them. Peer testing draws on this a ton as well. They just continue to plainly show that they don’t care. Time and time again, year after year, they continue to have the exact same issues and do fuck all about it.

        • LittlePrimate@feddit.de
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          2 years ago

          Why would they normally run into 6000+ subs going private? I’m sure they tested that their code can generally handle some (usually smaller) subs going private, but the number and size of the subs going dark isn’t a normal scenario and I doubt anyone would have assumed such a successful and coordinated protest involving some of the biggest subs would even be possible a few months ago.

      • BrooklynMan
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        2 years ago

        This isn’t a situation they would normally run into.

        you say that, hehe, but it’s happened at least twice in the past.

    • withersailor@aussie.zone
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      2 years ago

      It’s the user/moderator fault. If they would just keep working without pay there wouldn’t be any problem. /s

    • manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech
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      2 years ago

      they havent worked in a world where the site is not constantly slammed in years. they built the thing to be pre-loaded i bet.

    • amortized_cost@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      It’s not crashing. It’s just more than 7-80% of the requests getting request error because most of the subreddits went private. It sure does looks like crash to a completely uninformed users but it’s not a crash as we think.

  • FiskFisk33@lemmy.one
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    2 years ago

    I saw a lot of people saying they used bots to rewrite their entire post history to things like “fuck /u/spez”

    I’m thinking that amount of comment editing might be quite the spike on the servers.

    • lawliot@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I did that, but not “fuck u/spez” because that might gey the comment deleted altogether making the edit meaningless. Instead I edited to say the comments been deleted in protest against the API changes.

      • maniel
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        2 years ago

        that might gey the comment

        YUP, definitely gey

  • Generator@lemmy.pt
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    2 years ago

    Just one thing, must be indefinitely not 48h, otherwise nothing will change. A year have 365 days, 48h it’s a weekend, if subreddits come back after 48h it’s nothing happened.

    • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I think that stating it as 48 hours was smart. Because if subreddits start saying it’s indefinite, then they have time to start replacing mods and shutting the protest down. Whereas here, 48 hours will pass. They lose a lot of money in just 2 days. And if nothing changes, you’ll likely see decreased quality and/or continued protest.

      I think it left room at the table for reddit to cooperate. It’s a common bargaining thing.

  • BioHall@lemmy.pt
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    2 years ago

    How much spaghetti is your code if most of the communities switching to private fucks up your website?

  • sazey@fedia.io
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    2 years ago

    Our collective swan song of fuck /u/spez, from Hell’s heart I stab at thee.

    • Grander
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      2 years ago

      Well the article says a Reddit spokesman said that the subreddits going dark were the reason.

  • xTechDeath
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    2 years ago

    According to Reddit, the blackout was 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,”

    • Guy_Fieris_Hair
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      2 years ago

      I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it intentionally to prevent people from seeing the messages left on those subs. Or saying the subs ended up private because of technical problems.