On the chat team at Twitch in the early days after the Twitch Plays Pokemon crisis [1], we started artificially doubling all chat traffic through our systems, t

On the chat team at Twitch in the early days after the Twitch Plays Pokemon crisis [1], we started artificially doubling all chat traffic through our systems, then dropping the doubles just before they would be sent to users. [2] Not only did it give us a "big red button" to press during emergencies like OP, but it revealed important logical scaling issues before they became real problems. [1]: tldr; 1 million people playing a single game of Pokemon Red by using chat to send button presses [2]: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/93572955 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/93572955