Degrading a service/feature or having intermittent failures rather than just immediately knocking a service/feature offline. In this case, intentionally induced

Degrading a service/feature or having intermittent failures rather than just immediately knocking a service/feature offline. In this case, intentionally induced and used as a strong nudge to downstream users to stop using this particular feature. Comes from terminology used for the electric grid, where a brownout is a milder form of a blackout. Instead of electricity being entirely shut off and everything goes "black," the voltage drops and lights dim, i.e. go "brown."