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Down Detector is so unreliable. People that can't call an AT&T phone via Verizon will think (and report) that Verizon is down, when it's really AT&T. People can

Down Detector is so unreliable. People that can't call an AT&T phone via Verizon will think (and report) that Verizon is down, when it's really AT&T. People can try logging in using Facebook's on click login and not be able to get in, so they think Tiktok is down. It's not all that useful. I hate when journalists cite it.

dylan604 3y ago
It's only slightly better than "my mom claims". My mom would ask if I had the internet at my house. Yup. all of it. in a rack in my bedroom closet. She'd also report the "internet is down" when a single website was having issues. To me, that is down detector carrying on the legacy of moms everywhere.
- jordanthoms 3y ago
  A single report on there is useless. A sudden flood of reports is a good sign that something interesting is happening.
  - ambichook 3y ago
    and something is usually happening. the issue is that a lot of end users (so the people that down detector is pulling from) don't understand the systems well enough to point to where that something is and will often misattribute it, which is what both parent and grandparent is claiming.
jordanthoms 3y ago
It has false positives and noise for sure, but it's also very sensitive and shows issues very quickly. I wouldn't trust it as a single source, but in a case like this where our internal monitoring shows a spike of issues with the Google APIs and we can see a huge spike in reported issues for Google on Downdetector starting at the same time, it's useful to confirm that the issues have an external source.
pixl97 3y ago
Eh, mostly it's people misunderstanding what it represents. If I can't login to tiktok because FB is down, then tiktok is effectively down for me. When it comes to technology most people don't care about the trip, they care about the destination. So yea, tiktok isn't "down" but for a lot of people it might as well be, hence coupling your infrastructure/auth on other providers has side effects like this you must take into account.

dylan604 3y ago

It's only slightly better than "my mom claims". My mom would ask if I had the internet at my house. Yup. all of it. in a rack in my bedroom closet. She'd also report the "internet is down" when a single website was having issues. To me, that is down detector carrying on the legacy of moms everywhere.

jordanthoms 3y ago
A single report on there is useless. A sudden flood of reports is a good sign that something interesting is happening.
- ambichook 3y ago
  and something is usually happening. the issue is that a lot of end users (so the people that down detector is pulling from) don't understand the systems well enough to point to where that something is and will often misattribute it, which is what both parent and grandparent is claiming.

jordanthoms 3y ago

It has false positives and noise for sure, but it's also very sensitive and shows issues very quickly. I wouldn't trust it as a single source, but in a case like this where our internal monitoring shows a spike of issues with the Google APIs and we can see a huge spike in reported issues for Google on Downdetector starting at the same time, it's useful to confirm that the issues have an external source.

pixl97 3y ago

Eh, mostly it's people misunderstanding what it represents. If I can't login to tiktok because FB is down, then tiktok is effectively down for me. When it comes to technology most people don't care about the trip, they care about the destination. So yea, tiktok isn't "down" but for a lot of people it might as well be, hence coupling your infrastructure/auth on other providers has side effects like this you must take into account.