Reddit blaming website crashing on subreddits going private ( www.theverge.com )

Reddit went 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 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,” spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge. The company said the outage was fully resolved at 1:28PM ET.

Calcharger ,
@Calcharger@kbin.social avatar

Damn that sucks. So long as we start getting stronger and stronger activity over here in the fedverse, I'm staying here.

themadcodger ,
@themadcodger@kbin.social avatar

The fediverse exploded after Twitter became a dumpster fire. This is another huge migration, so the numbers are going up quite a bit again. I'm excited to see what we build with such a large number of new people!

conciselyverbose ,

This is hilarious.

They already were killing the experience by tanking the algorithm, and there was straight up no path to me ever using the mobile site or their horrendous app, but their full on meltdown in response to the backlash is next level.

Blegh ,

Well... if it isn't the consequences of /Spez's actions...

steerclear ,

Looking at this from a leadership perspective when communicating to investors, it’s a lot easier to explain the low user engagement over the next couple days as a blip due to a service outage blocking access rather than due to an intentional protest against using the site.

Not suggesting this is deliberate, but I do imagine this is actually a best case scenario to them in some ways.

gerowen ,

Exactly. If people want this protest to be taken seriously, they shouldn't have pre-emptively announced it would only be 48 hours long. 48 hours is nothing to worry about when you know it's coming. Like you said, they'll just blame the lack of engagement on server issues.

FreeBooteR69 ,
@FreeBooteR69@kbin.social avatar

I love the format of kbin, with some TLC i can see it taking off. I like it better than Lemmy's layout. As to people returning after 48 hours, doesn't that depend on Reddit caving in? I don't see that happening, so why would anyone return if Reddit's terms are egregious? They going to cough up the money to Reddit to use their API? People just going to cave in and use their shit app, enduring the ads and personal data farming? This should be interesting.

jclinares ,
@jclinares@kbin.social avatar

To add a bit more context, this comment is from a former Reddit dev, who is now the creator and developer of Tildes, one of the Reddit alternatives that's been gaining traction in the last week:

(I used to work as a backend developer at Reddit - I left 6 years ago but I doubt the way things work has changed much)

I think it's extremely unlikely that this is deliberate. The way that Reddit builds "mixed" subreddit listings (where you see posts from multiple subreddits, like users' front pages) is inefficient and strange, and relies heavily on multiple layers of caches. Having so many subreddits private with their posts inaccessible has never happened before, and is probably causing a bunch of issues with this process.

YourAuntiTali ,

Anyone happen to have invites? I’m trying to get my foot in a number of different sites

tyg13 ,

Same. At this point, I'm open to using almost any reddit-like site that isn't reddit. With this many disgruntled former users, there's bound to at least one major alternative that blows up, just a matter of finding (and seeding) it.

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