5 ms·

> Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block peo

> Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in. Hey, just as an FYI, this comment doesn't make any sense. Why would blocking people from viewing the TL on the home page cause Twitter more stress?

lolinder 3y ago
I don't know what all is involved on the backend, but when I go to twitter.com it runs 123 requests and transfers 11MB of data in order to serve me a login page.
Maxion 3y ago
> Why would blocking people from viewing the TL on the home page cause Twitter more stress? If you block stuff somewhere in the microservie hell in the backend, but forget to update the frontend code properly, and everything was built with the assumption that authentication and authorization is not a thing, and suddenly it is, there's bound to be craploads of stuff that can start spamming network requests.
- dan-robertson 3y ago
  I don’t think ‘built with the assumption that authentication and authorisation is not a thing’ is the best description. Requests from logged in users would already need to be authenticated to see private accounts they follow. It’s more just the client having aggressive retry logic in the case of whatever rate limit responses they’re getting.
minimaxir 3y ago
Broken retry logic due to an unexpected situation.
adamwk 3y ago
It could be retry logic that gets stuck in certain conditions that have been met by how TL blocking is handled.
ben_w 3y ago
10 If User has reached end of scroll region, load more content 20 Wait $timeout for new content; if a load failed, it was probably a mobile network glitch or something else we should ignore 30 GOTO 10
spiffytech 3y ago
I think the GP is saying Twitter's client-side scripting doesn't understand permanent failures. It thinks all failures are transient, so it keeps retrying, hoping to get through. That creates more traffic than if Twitter just let the user read the site.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
the42thdoctor 3y ago
I think he was trying to say that the Frontend of the Twitter timeline is not aware of the new request limit, and when that limit is reached it just retries the request, as it would in a normal network error, and keeps in retrying resulting on DDOS. But I don't believe on that because Twitter is a billion dollar company and that kind of mistake is dumb. So idk.
- cududa 3y ago
  You severely overestimate musk’s software engineering prowess
- dspillett 3y ago
  > But I don't believe on that because Twitter is a billion dollar company and that kind of mistake is dumb. This sort of mistake is very common especially when a product is going through a period of change, so it seems very believable to me that recent rate limiting features (or older features that have not been used in a long time or maybe ever) on the backend hadn't been adequately tested to make sure there are no unforeseen side-effects on the front-end when they are activated under pressure.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Very common for start ups with inexperienced devs, not for long standing tech companies with the best and most experienced employees... Isn't Elon supposed to know this shit himself? I guess we learned alot about the state of the company as well as elons own coding skills with this event, didn't we?
    - dspillett 3y ago
      Even in “long standing tech companies with the best and most experienced employees” this sort of issue has been known to fall through the cracks. Twitter has experienced significant staffing changes, procedure changes, and code changes, recently and any one of those three things can exacerbate the chances of side-effects of changes not being realised until too late.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Freedom2 3y ago
If it doesn't make any sense, what's your analysis? At least they tried to come up with some technical explanation and incite my curiosity, rather than dismiss it outright.
croes 3y ago
Browser:can I get the tweet? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No You know what I mean?
albedoa 3y ago
> Hey, just as an FYI, this comment doesn't make any sense. You need to understand that there is a huge gulf between "this doesn't make any sense" and "I don't understand this".

lolinder 3y ago

I don't know what all is involved on the backend, but when I go to twitter.com it runs 123 requests and transfers 11MB of data in order to serve me a login page.

Maxion 3y ago

> Why would blocking people from viewing the TL on the home page cause Twitter more stress? If you block stuff somewhere in the microservie hell in the backend, but forget to update the frontend code properly, and everything was built with the assumption that authentication and authorization is not a thing, and suddenly it is, there's bound to be craploads of stuff that can start spamming network requests.

dan-robertson 3y ago
I don’t think ‘built with the assumption that authentication and authorisation is not a thing’ is the best description. Requests from logged in users would already need to be authenticated to see private accounts they follow. It’s more just the client having aggressive retry logic in the case of whatever rate limit responses they’re getting.

minimaxir 3y ago

Broken retry logic due to an unexpected situation.

adamwk 3y ago

It could be retry logic that gets stuck in certain conditions that have been met by how TL blocking is handled.

ben_w 3y ago

10 If User has reached end of scroll region, load more content 20 Wait $timeout for new content; if a load failed, it was probably a mobile network glitch or something else we should ignore 30 GOTO 10

spiffytech 3y ago

I think the GP is saying Twitter's client-side scripting doesn't understand permanent failures. It thinks all failures are transient, so it keeps retrying, hoping to get through. That creates more traffic than if Twitter just let the user read the site.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

the42thdoctor 3y ago

I think he was trying to say that the Frontend of the Twitter timeline is not aware of the new request limit, and when that limit is reached it just retries the request, as it would in a normal network error, and keeps in retrying resulting on DDOS. But I don't believe on that because Twitter is a billion dollar company and that kind of mistake is dumb. So idk.

cududa 3y ago
You severely overestimate musk’s software engineering prowess
dspillett 3y ago
> But I don't believe on that because Twitter is a billion dollar company and that kind of mistake is dumb. This sort of mistake is very common especially when a product is going through a period of change, so it seems very believable to me that recent rate limiting features (or older features that have not been used in a long time or maybe ever) on the backend hadn't been adequately tested to make sure there are no unforeseen side-effects on the front-end when they are activated under pressure.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Very common for start ups with inexperienced devs, not for long standing tech companies with the best and most experienced employees... Isn't Elon supposed to know this shit himself? I guess we learned alot about the state of the company as well as elons own coding skills with this event, didn't we?
  - dspillett 3y ago
    Even in “long standing tech companies with the best and most experienced employees” this sort of issue has been known to fall through the cracks. Twitter has experienced significant staffing changes, procedure changes, and code changes, recently and any one of those three things can exacerbate the chances of side-effects of changes not being realised until too late.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Freedom2 3y ago

If it doesn't make any sense, what's your analysis? At least they tried to come up with some technical explanation and incite my curiosity, rather than dismiss it outright.

croes 3y ago

Browser:can I get the tweet? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No Browser:can I get the tweet now? Server: No You know what I mean?

albedoa 3y ago

> Hey, just as an FYI, this comment doesn't make any sense. You need to understand that there is a huge gulf between "this doesn't make any sense" and "I don't understand this".