from Hacker News

Biden-Trump debate breaks parts of Reddit, it seems

by hax0ron3 on 6/28/24, 3:49 AM with 27 comments

• by ggregoire on 6/28/24, 4:58 AM

  I read this comment on one of the threads on reddit:

  > It broke because of /r/politics. When a discussion thread gets meaningfully past 30,000 comments, it starts to lag subsequent submissions to that thread, and then lag the entire site, until there's eventually a full chokeoff. The debate thread ballooned to an insane number of 56k before mods locked it, at which point the comments in there were 25 minutes behind realtime.

  > Had the /r/politics mods locked the first thread and started a new one properly, it wouldn't have caused a sitewide issue. But this has been a problem since forever. It just rarely happens because there are rarely scenarios where enough people are commenting on a single specific thread so as to cause the cascade failure.

• by viridian on 6/28/24, 3:57 AM

  It isn't just those subreddits, comments are broken all over. New threads currently are showing comments as a part of the topic API, but the actual threads then return 0 comments. I do think the influx of traffic is probably responsible though.

  I'd love to know what actually happened in detail behind the scenes.

• by Zren on 6/28/24, 4:02 AM

  Not sure if this timestamp is when the topic was locked or when reddit broke. The thread has 56015 comments.

  https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1dq5s2f/discussio...

  Edit: New comments seem to be slowly appearing.

  2024-06-28T02:26:10+00:00 = 22:26 EST (First loaded around 23hXX EST)

  2024-06-28T02:35:37+00:00 = 22:35 EST (Loaded at 00h09 EST)

  2024-06-28T02:35:41+00:00 = 22:35 EST (Loaded at 00h19 EST)

  2024-06-28T02:41:17+00:00 = 22:41 EST (Loaded at 00h19 EST) This might have been when the topic was locked since there's a mod comment at the top now.

  However it seems the "all comments" still shows the last few comments in a subreddit (without the context).

  https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/

  https://old.reddit.com/r/all/comments/

• by Zren on 6/28/24, 4:23 AM

  https://www.redditstatus.com/

  > Comment tree processing is delayed

  * 21:31 PDT Update - A large spike in traffic caused some scaling issues, which delayed new comment display across the site. All comments posted during this time will be displayed as the servers work through the backlog.

  * 21:08 PDT Update - We are continuing to work on addressing the issues causing comments to be delayed.

  * 20:26 PDT Identified - We've identified the underlying problems and are working on addressing them.

  * 19:17 PDT Investigating - We are aware that newly posted comments are not showing up immediately in comment trees. We are currently investigating this issue.

  This makes sense why https://old.reddit.com/r/all/comments/ works but the nested comments in threads don't.

• by hello_computer on 6/28/24, 4:18 AM

  after spezgate and maxwellhill, occams razor says reddit is capable of anything

• by cryptoz on 6/28/24, 4:17 AM

  Mods of big subreddits usually break out threads into < 10,000 comments to avoid issues. /r/politics does this all the time. Not a clue why they didn't do it this time.

• by rvz on 6/28/24, 4:01 AM

  It was crystal clear that what happened in the last few hours showed to the whole world that there was no debate and no contest.

  Biden did not take any cognitive tests before the show, and his incompetence was on full display on national television.

  There is no mixer that can spin this catastrophe into anything positive for Biden.

  He must do the right thing and admit he is not fit for another 4 years and resign after that disaster.

• by hello_computer on 6/28/24, 6:47 AM

    Oops they flagged it again.
    I think that they're mad.
    "He wasn't that lame!"
    Oh baby, baby
  
    Oops, you think it's a hug
    server 503 bug
    "They're not that competent!"

• by BadHumans on 6/28/24, 3:59 AM

  The idea that this is censorship is laughable. Reddit fails whenever the wind blows too hard. It isn't too much of a stretch to think one of the most anticipated presidential debates collapsed Reddit.

• by miles on 6/28/24, 3:59 AM

  There does not seem to be widespread censorship happening among Biden-friendly news outlets:

  Congress' Democrats in "state of shock" over Biden debate performance https://www.axios.com/2024/06/28/house-democrats-biden-debat...

  It’s time: The Democrats must replace Joe Biden with California Gov. Gavin Newsom https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article289600484.html

  Ditch Biden. That Debate Performance Was a Disaster. https://newrepublic.com/article/183242/joe-biden-debate-perf...

  Democrats consider the unthinkable: It’s time for Biden to go https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/27/biden-democrats-rep...

  Who Won the Debate? Biden Stumbles Left Trump on Top https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/politics/biden-trump-d...

  The NYT piece includes these quotes from Biden allies as well:

  Kate Bedingfield (Mr. Biden’s former White House communications director):

  “It was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I don’t think there’s any other way to slice it. His biggest issue was to prove to the American people that he had the energy, the stamina — and he didn’t do that.”

  Andrew Yang:

  “Look, I debated Joe 7 times in 2020. He’s a different guy in 2024.”

  Steve Schmidt (co-founder of the Lincoln Project):

  “Joe Biden lost the country tonight, and will not get it back. If Trump is a threat and democracy is on the line, then Biden must step aside. His duty, oath and legacy require an act of humility and selflessness.”

• by admissionsguy on 6/28/24, 5:09 AM

  That's what happens when you (don't) fire 80% of your employees.