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So many minor flags already that the problem could be completely accidental. For example people search in android client no longer checks my following&follower

So many minor flags already that the problem could be completely accidental. For example people search in android client no longer checks my following&followers. Odd audio behavior in Spaces. More than a few scattered bits of broken micro features work and then don't again. Meanwhile press coverage is look how they only needed half the people on staff so let's do this everywhere asap and recapture value for the poor shareholders.

mrzool 4y ago
> So many minor flags already that the problem could be completely accidental. I hope you're right, but honestly there are also legit reasons to think otherwise. It could be a fuck up due to staff shortage and knowledge loss crisis, but it could also be an impromptu, poorly implemented and communicated decision. Both scenarios would not be surprising at this point.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  It’s at least a fuck up with poor communications considering Twitter still hasn’t communicated what is going on
- matwood 4y ago
  The longer it goes on, I'm thinking it's both. The initial down was an accident/breakage, but the people who could fix it were fired. Obviously this situation is embarrassing for Musk so no communication. But, now that's it's down there are probably discussions about leaving it down with no decision made yet.
  - hairofadog 4y ago
    Hasn’t it been established that it’s intentional? I can only speculate as to whether it’s embarrassing for Musk, but my assumption is that he enjoys flaunting his power to cause wreckage without justification rather than being embarrassed by it.
    - matwood 4y ago
      Everything I’ve seen is unconfirmed hearsay. /shrug
quitit 4y ago
This is pretty much the kind of decay that people were expecting. Twitter's decline will be a "death by a thousand bites." I don't think anyone reasonable was suggesting that the site would just disappear overnight after such a large loss of staff. (Despite even chieftwit claiming this as evidence for business as usual.)
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  I agree. Twitter has too much momentum alone for it to disappear overnight. Which is arguable a good thing, as it allows alternatives to grow into the space
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  There was, unfortunately, a lot of nonsensical claims by people with no technical knowledge that Twitter would go down overnight. But anyone with a modicum of experience would know that makes no sense. Websites of all sizes are designed to largely self operate with no manual intervention for decent periods of time. Otherwise all large websites would be down during holidays, etc.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    It's been a while longer than a typical holiday break. Sites typically have some sort of serious incident that requires human intervention every so often; at some point the humans to handle it will not be present.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    PagerDuty engineer here. There is much to discuss with respect to "Websites of all sizes are designed to largely self operate with no manual intervention for decent periods of time." The phrase "decent periods of time" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You also said "Otherwise all large websites would be down during holidays, etc." What makes you think large websites don't go down in some fashion or another during Holidays? Are you thinking that there would be nobody to handle incidents over a holiday? Because every large website has people on call over holidays, and they handle incidents that would become extended outages if left unattended. Many large companies publish incident reports, and if you care to review them, you may find that indeed, their sites do experience partial outages all the time, with no exceptions for holidays (full outages are rare, of course). Many companies do have "skeleton staffing" during major holidays, so they try to mitigate the risk of a major outage by instituting "code freezes" and not shipping new features. That doesn't speak to how resilient those sites are, it speaks to the fact that yes, it's a normal things for sites to go down, and yes, humans are needed to keep them up. This whole thing speaks to the difference between "robust" and "resilient." Robust: The site doesn't go down. Resilient: When the site goes down, it comes back up with no or little impact on the user/customer experience. Robust is an architectural property. Resilient is both an architectural and organizational property. Cutting staff impacts resilience, but not robustness. But for most users, the difference between them is invisible. If you see a site that appears to remain up over a holiday, it may be resilient rather than robust.
kfarr 4y ago
Could be both! APIs decay, someone makes the realization those APIs feed third party clients, and same someone decides it's not a priority with limited labor to fix.

mrzool 4y ago

> So many minor flags already that the problem could be completely accidental. I hope you're right, but honestly there are also legit reasons to think otherwise. It could be a fuck up due to staff shortage and knowledge loss crisis, but it could also be an impromptu, poorly implemented and communicated decision. Both scenarios would not be surprising at this point.

rhaway84773 4y ago
It’s at least a fuck up with poor communications considering Twitter still hasn’t communicated what is going on
matwood 4y ago
The longer it goes on, I'm thinking it's both. The initial down was an accident/breakage, but the people who could fix it were fired. Obviously this situation is embarrassing for Musk so no communication. But, now that's it's down there are probably discussions about leaving it down with no decision made yet.
- hairofadog 4y ago
  Hasn’t it been established that it’s intentional? I can only speculate as to whether it’s embarrassing for Musk, but my assumption is that he enjoys flaunting his power to cause wreckage without justification rather than being embarrassed by it.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Everything I’ve seen is unconfirmed hearsay. /shrug

quitit 4y ago

This is pretty much the kind of decay that people were expecting. Twitter's decline will be a "death by a thousand bites." I don't think anyone reasonable was suggesting that the site would just disappear overnight after such a large loss of staff. (Despite even chieftwit claiming this as evidence for business as usual.)

was_a_dev 4y ago
I agree. Twitter has too much momentum alone for it to disappear overnight. Which is arguable a good thing, as it allows alternatives to grow into the space
rhaway84773 4y ago
There was, unfortunately, a lot of nonsensical claims by people with no technical knowledge that Twitter would go down overnight. But anyone with a modicum of experience would know that makes no sense. Websites of all sizes are designed to largely self operate with no manual intervention for decent periods of time. Otherwise all large websites would be down during holidays, etc.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  It's been a while longer than a typical holiday break. Sites typically have some sort of serious incident that requires human intervention every so often; at some point the humans to handle it will not be present.
- a4isms 4y ago
  PagerDuty engineer here. There is much to discuss with respect to "Websites of all sizes are designed to largely self operate with no manual intervention for decent periods of time." The phrase "decent periods of time" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. You also said "Otherwise all large websites would be down during holidays, etc." What makes you think large websites don't go down in some fashion or another during Holidays? Are you thinking that there would be nobody to handle incidents over a holiday? Because every large website has people on call over holidays, and they handle incidents that would become extended outages if left unattended. Many large companies publish incident reports, and if you care to review them, you may find that indeed, their sites do experience partial outages all the time, with no exceptions for holidays (full outages are rare, of course). Many companies do have "skeleton staffing" during major holidays, so they try to mitigate the risk of a major outage by instituting "code freezes" and not shipping new features. That doesn't speak to how resilient those sites are, it speaks to the fact that yes, it's a normal things for sites to go down, and yes, humans are needed to keep them up. This whole thing speaks to the difference between "robust" and "resilient." Robust: The site doesn't go down. Resilient: When the site goes down, it comes back up with no or little impact on the user/customer experience. Robust is an architectural property. Resilient is both an architectural and organizational property. Cutting staff impacts resilience, but not robustness. But for most users, the difference between them is invisible. If you see a site that appears to remain up over a holiday, it may be resilient rather than robust.

kfarr 4y ago

Could be both! APIs decay, someone makes the realization those APIs feed third party clients, and same someone decides it's not a priority with limited labor to fix.