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Meta outage

metastatus.com

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Re: Meta outage

#571

Post by busymom0 »

ndiddy wrote: post #535
neocritter wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's real. Single core performance improves all the time. People overestimate how much power it takes to handle lots of queries per second on a well-tuned system and well-written software in 2024. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I see the "sorry, we are receiving too many requests, try again in a few minutes" error several times a day on here. I don't think that HN is reliably able to handle the amount of users it currently has.

I believe that's by design if you send an action request very quickly after a previous one. It's very easy to replicate. Open a post. Then click the upvote button and very quickly click the favorite button too. That will trigger it. I think it's used to rate limit.

Re: Meta outage

#572

Post by sandspar »

Kalium wrote: post #438
matsemann wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's something off here. I wouldn't expecting to be shown as logged out when the services are down. I'd expect calls to fail with something aka 500 and an error showing "something happen edited on our side". Not all the apps going haywire.

At the scale of Meta, "down" is a nuanced concept. You are very unlikely to get every piece of functionality seizing up at once. What you are likely to get is some services ceasing to function and other services doing error-handling. For example, if the service that authenticates a user stops working but the service that shows the login form works, then you get a complex interaction. The resulting messaging - and thu…

Slightly unrelated question, but just how "Big" is Meta? I know it's vast, but as an outsider I have trouble grokking the scale of it.

Re: Meta outage

#573

Post by Solvency »

boring_twenties wrote: post #392
bigwheeler wrote: post #334

Tip for Meta engineers: when your service is failing, don't just log people out and prevent logins. Display a cute image that shows that the service is drastically failing (like a whale or something), and then people will know to stop trying to repeatedly log in. The public might even come up with a catchy name for the whale.

Beyond unbelievable that going on an hour later, they're still showing "incorrect password" errors. How many hundreds of millions of people have wasted time frantically trying (in vain) to reset their passwords and pointlessly freaking out that their account might be compromised? What a bunch of careless, incompetent excuses for engineers.

I can almost guarantee you're getting mercilessly downvoted because half of the people here are sympathetic Meta worshippers who desperately (1) wish they worked there and (2) know they'd probably contribute similarly to this same horribly engineered system.

Re: Meta outage

#574

Post by shkkmo »

lanstin wrote: post #482
matsemann wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's something off here. I wouldn't expecting to be shown as logged out when the services are down. I'd expect calls to fail with something aka 500 and an error showing "something happen edited on our side". Not all the apps going haywire.

Come on use a little imagination. DNS lookup for the db holding the shard with the user credentials disappears. Code isn’t expecting this, throws a generic 4xx because security instead of a generic 5xx (plenty of people writing auth code will take the stance all failures are presented the same as a bad password or non-existing username); caller interprets this a login failure. Same auth system system used to validate…

> plenty of people writing auth code will take the stance all failures are presented the same as a bad password or non-existing username

Those people would be wrong. You can take all unexpected errors and stick them behind a generic error message like "something went wrong" but you should not lie to your users with your error message.

Re: Meta outage

#575

Post by sandspar »

barbazoo wrote: post #453
mfrommil wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much better UX would be clear error messaging informing users that the service is down and there is no problem with their individual account. This would prevent people from panicking they've been hacked and/or unnecessarily resetting their password.

Not the worst thing that a bunch of Facebook users are resetting their passwords.

That's the sound of millions of "password" becoming "passwordnew"

Re: Meta outage

#576

Post by ceejayoz »

SoullessSilent wrote: post #149
ceejayoz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate that companies do this. PayPal does it sometimes, too.

It sounds like you are struggling with withdrawal symptoms. I recommend a detox and get your life into order.

It has nothing to do with Facebook; it's the trend of sending email from alternative domains like facebookmail.com that train users to trust unknown domain names.

It's particularly egregious with critical stuff like banking.

Re: Meta outage

#577

Post by newswasboring »

ndiddy wrote: post #535
neocritter wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's real. Single core performance improves all the time. People overestimate how much power it takes to handle lots of queries per second on a well-tuned system and well-written software in 2024. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I see the "sorry, we are receiving too many requests, try again in a few minutes" error several times a day on here. I don't think that HN is reliably able to handle the amount of users it currently has.

I have been using HN daily since I was a teenager. I've seen that message maybe 10 times outside of serious issues in last 15 years. It's strange to me that it happens so frequently for you.

Re: Meta outage

#578

Post by [deleted] »

Solvency wrote: post #492
GaggiX wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the standard HN experience, this site runs on a single core I believe.

You don't run a massively profitable VC company by just throwing money away at a second core.

[deleted]

Re: Meta outage

#579

Post by partiallypro »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #281

Looking at the Downdetector home page [1], it looks like many more services are having outages, not just the ones owned by Meta, including: - Google - YouTube - Google Play - T-Mobile - X (Twitter) - Discord - TikTok - Pokemon Go - Snapchat It looks like they all have the same failure point. [1] https://downdetector.com

Down Detector is so unreliable. People that can't call an AT&T phone via Verizon will think (and report) that Verizon is down, when it's really AT&T. People can try logging in using Facebook's on click login and not be able to get in, so they think Tiktok is down. It's not all that useful. I hate when journalists cite it.

Re: Meta outage

#580

Post by johnfn »

jon-wood wrote: post #374
DeusExMachina wrote: post #281

Looking at the Downdetector home page [1], it looks like many more services are having outages, not just the ones owned by Meta, including: - Google - YouTube - Google Play - T-Mobile - X (Twitter) - Discord - TikTok - Pokemon Go - Snapchat It looks like they all have the same failure point. [1] https://downdetector.com

Or people are using Facebook Auth for them. I don't really trust Down Detector, which despite the claims is really People Winging on Twitter Detector.

People are using Facebook Auth for YouTube?
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