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Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

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Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#51

Post by falcolas »

EA-3167 wrote: post #11
stillbourne wrote: post #8

How long before they admins swoop in and change ownership of the blacked out subreddits?

What does that really accomplish? Reddit mods are often bad enough as is, imagine what Reddit scab mods would be like. It would also be a huge invitation for the displaced the rest to make life unbearable for those new mods and the handful of admins overseeing them. Reddit as a community would make for one hell of an intellectual DDOS.

> What does that really accomplish?

To borrow from another comment buried below: I think the company cares more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users.

In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#53

Post by phpisthebest »

falcolas wrote: post #31
phpisthebest wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is odd.... while most communities hate the mods, they hate admins far more. Admins taken over a subreddit would kill it in the eyes of the users.

I think the admins will care more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users who would notice a moderator replacement. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.

the API thing was that, it is moved beyond that now, and admin action on that level will make the API issue an after thought...

If they do that, forget IPO, there will be no more reddit at all.

right now they already missed the IPO point years ago, today for a company to have a successful IPO they need more than good MAU numbers, and this API change was never going to get to the profitability numbers they need for a good IPO

Their IPO dreams were fucked long before today

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#54

Post by EMCymatics »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #2

I have not read a reddit devblog or anything like that. My guess is they are doing some kind of caching of posts via elasticsearch/redis or something similar. It must depend on the privacy settings of a sub. So when 1000 subs go private, they potentially had to update hundreds of millions of comments. Anyone else have a theory?

Well that is how wallstreetbets freezes the subreddit to log all of the potentially actionable comments.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#56

Post by amyjess »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #2

I have not read a reddit devblog or anything like that. My guess is they are doing some kind of caching of posts via elasticsearch/redis or something similar. It must depend on the privacy settings of a sub. So when 1000 subs go private, they potentially had to update hundreds of millions of comments. Anyone else have a theory?

My theory is that the algorithm that produces the front page relies on the largest subreddits all being public. But if it can't draw on posts from the largest subs, it'll have to dip into a bunch of smaller subs, and the part of the algorithm where it delves deeper and deeper into less popular subreddits is terribly optimized and puts a huge strain on the servers.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#57

Post by jstarfish »

Longlius wrote: post #30
stillbourne wrote: post #8

How long before they admins swoop in and change ownership of the blacked out subreddits?

The main reason why reddit works as a platform is because its mods and subreddit regulars do a lot of unpaid work. Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice?

> Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice?

Enter: an army of scab accounts ending in _GPT.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#58

Post by biesnecker »

jedberg wrote: post #44
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #2

I have not read a reddit devblog or anything like that. My guess is they are doing some kind of caching of posts via elasticsearch/redis or something similar. It must depend on the privacy settings of a sub. So when 1000 subs go private, they potentially had to update hundreds of millions of comments. Anyone else have a theory?

Posted elsewhere, but yeah that's my theory too (having actually helped built it in the first place). My guess is the caches got blown out because the entire system is built on the idea that most people are looking at the most popular content. When you close down all the most popular content, you have to dig deep into the long tail for fresh content. Also, my guess is that the code for building homepages is not optim…

Makes sense to me. I remember several lunch conversations at FB about whether or not we even could restart the site with totally cold caches. I’m sure it was possible but it wouldn’t have been clean or pretty.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#59

Post by RSHEPP »

jedberg wrote: post #39
sofixa wrote: post #29

> A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” Calling bullshit on that one. If they had expected stability issues, and knew exactly which subreddits will go private and when, how is it possible they had so much "anticipated issues"?

My guess is that they knew the caches would get blown out and would have to refill with content from non-blacked out subs, and decided to just take the hit and let it ride, knowing it would recover itself soon enough. I mean, honestly that's probably what I would have done if I were still in charge.

And in this case, use it as an opportunity to learn more about the system. Treat it as an experiment.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#60

Post by falcolas »

phpisthebest wrote: post #53
falcolas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the admins will care more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users who would notice a moderator replacement. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.

the API thing was that, it is moved beyond that now, and admin action on that level will make the API issue an after thought... If they do that, forget IPO, there will be no more reddit at all. right now they already missed the IPO point years ago, today for a company to have a successful IPO they need more than good MAU numbers, and this API change was never going to get to the profitability numbers they need for a…

The internet forgets too quickly. And so long as Reddit can present a "everything's awesome" front, their IPO will likely take off.

Having /r/Pics down permanently because of a protest would be a problem, but a poorly moderated /r/Pics would not. The quality would just go down, and Reddit would get a good justification for locking it down.

"No, /r/Pics wasn't shut down because of the protest, it was shut down because there were too many law-breaking posts. And you know how tough we have to be on those kinds of posts."

At least, that's my take on how most investors would look at it. Investors love companies who focus on profitability, regardless of their long term perspective.

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