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Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself.

The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying.

In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right.

The second video shows why it's jiggling. 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.

This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS.

Unbelievable. It's amateur hour.

430 comments
Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

Lest anyone doubt that Twitter was idiotic enough to release code that would cause a race condition and result in its own users executing a DDOS attack on it, here's the network console readout from Firefox showing all the network requests blasting away.

Of course I immediately closed out my connection because I'm a good person. Oh, but it's the weekend and Evil Sheldon is in control so I kept the party going for a while since Twitter insisted on it.

Lest anyone doubt that Twitter was idiotic enough to release code that would cause a race condition and result in its own users executing a DDOS attack on it, here's the network console readout from Firefox showing all the network requests blasting away.

Of course I immediately closed out my connection because I'm a good person. Oh, but it's the weekend and Evil Sheldon is in control so I kept the party going for a while since Twitter insisted on it.

Andres Jalinton

@sysop408
It's kind of sad and really telling of what is going on behind the frontend, overworked engineers trying to meet the demands of an idiotic owner.

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@Andres yeah and almost certainly this has something to do with them shutting off anonymous access to Twitter content.

There must have been an insane nest of logic that the devs had to tiptoe through to make the service workable as a private only service.

I presume that the Twitter client didn't anticipate the possibility that Twitter has zero content for it... or maybe someone decided to push to production, pack up, and walk out the door in a blaze of glory.

ash

@Andres @sysop408 meh, I think if you can work at Twitter you should be able to get another job

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@blamellors On the contrary, I think this is the best feature Space Karen's released to date.

Alex μ•Œλ ‰μŠ€

@sysop408 i see some angry twitter engineers having revenge on Elmo 🀣

mofu mofu fumo
@sysop408 i can understand how this can happen on a codebase as decript as what twitter has. honestly shocked it doesnt happen every single day.
radio

@sysop408 I would prefer this to the experience I had before Musk: shortly after I'd log in, someone with an address block owned by Verizon would start up a DDOS against my desktop, using many addresses within the block. This repeated assault continued intermittently starting in 2018, and coincided with other Twitter pre-Musk surveillance and harassment by the spooks who ran actually ran Twitter.

DELETED

@sysop408 This deserves a place in a museum of modern art.

MParsec

@sysop408 Burn Twitter down,and grow some new;)

mark

@sysop408 you may have inspired me to log in, scroll that thing like the price is right, and then let it not pull new messages for forever. Lol

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@ATLeagle I don't know how widespread it is, but it's still doing it for me. I was able to post that video to Twitter and then do a new recording of the bug still happening while the video of the bug plays in the background. lol. It has been going on for at least three hours.

Robin Bobcat

@kkarhan @sysop408 that's exactly what this is supposed to be preventing. He's eliminating anonymous access, and limiting legitimate access, because folks were archiving accounts.

Robin Bobcat

@sysop408 what an absolute tool. 600 tweets a *day*β€½ That's about ten minutes of casial scrolling. And considering that a third of those are going to be ads and promoted tweets, that's even less.

Making it a hard cutoff is the big WTF here. He's effectively banning users - *who have been using the service as intended and generating revenue for him* - for 24 hours. At a time.

If he wants to limit users, then *slow* the flow, don't *stop* it. Then the code won't freak out trying to refresh.

DELETED

@sysop408

With all due respect why are you still on Twitter?

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@Svetlana2 so I can bonk Russian propagandists and give crap to fascists.

DELETED

@sysop408

You're rationalizing my friend. Twitter controls you through algorithms and Elon Musk himself.

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@Svetlana2 I don't agree with people people who say there's no point in resisting. There's no taking Twitter back that's for sure, but watch how the accounts work autonomously together to make life miserable for disinfo accounts.

There are plenty of very smart people with a mischievous streak, thick skin, and a lot of patience who are still there making some noise. From time to time, I put my Shiba face back on and go join them.

DELETED

@Svetlana2 @sysop408 You made my day proving it’s a self-DDOS.

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@scafaria @Svetlana2

I almost missed it too! I noticed the jiggling scrollbar out of the corner of my eye and thought... wow is that what I think it is? I took a video of just the home screen and closed my browser.

I didn't think of also getting proof from the network console until a few minutes later. Luckily, it wasn't fixed yet.

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@scafaria ok, here's an even funnier version of the Twitter self-DDOS.

This is a video of my video of Twitter self-DDOSing itself played from a Tweet while the bug is still active and the page itself continues to flood Twitter with requests.

Now notice the trending topics in the sidebar: , WTF Twitter, Rate Limit Exceeded, Damn Twitter

This might be the most perfect screen video ever recorded. πŸ˜†

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@jake4480 that's what I said, but with a lot of incredulous f-bombs in for emphasis.

I've been laughing about this all morning. The next time I'm having a bad day as a programmer, I'll think of the inglorious soul who DDOSed Twitter FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.

Jake in the desert

@sysop408 it's amazing πŸ€£πŸ˜‚πŸ€£

EarthMomma

@sysop408

Have to repeat this!!!!

I'll think of the inglorious soul who DDOSed Twitter FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.

David Gerard

@sysop408 @jake4480 i'd *like* to think they were a comrade doing their best

Brian Hawthorne

@sysop408 @jake4480 It’s probably a cry for help from one of the H1B Visa workers that Musk has handcuffed to their desks.

73 million seconds

@sysop408 @Svetlana2 The danger here is that you are providing some legitimacy to the site being "balanced" that it really does not deserve because the house always wins.

Lockdownyourlife

@sysop408 I was retrieving things off the TL when it shit itself. And by retrieving I mean screenshots.

It's going great over there. 🀣🀣

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@Lockdownyourlife oh you laugh, but I think self-DDOS is the only good feature that Elon's released. Genius.

CIA Fortnite Fund Program

@sysop408 elon wouldn’t rebrand twitter as β€œthe everything app” if it wasn’t capable of everything, including destroying itself now would he :D

DELETED

@sysop408 let's lay off all the engineers, what could possibly go wrong?

kmetz

@sysop408 I just tweeted about it, linking this here post on Mastodon. Lol. With a note to consider maybe staying here.

vruz

@sysop408

Only amateurs (in the bad sense of the term) ignore sufficient things for them to believe enough in a mission replete with magical thinking, sophistry, and marketspeak. The hatred and antidemocratic bile is a bonus on top of all that.

Padjo

@sysop408 having DDoS’d myself with a bad line of code I find it hard to laugh at this… but somehow I’m managing

Ghost of Hope

@sysop408 Only thing I have to say is...

More of this please

EarthMomma

@sysop408

Well this is actually fairly logical AND hilarious!!

Cozy

@sysop408 @mariyadelano Good think there’s no IoT devices that interface with twitter or this could be a problem! ;)

VHasch

@sysop408
Good thing Elon fired most of his staff, eh? 😏

πŸ’€ Maggot πŸ’€

@sysop408 "We are seeing record levels of engagement since we gated our community. :blobcatcoffee: "

Peace Out Art :noverify:

@sysop408
Ah, that explains it. I have a couple of meteorologists that I’ve been accessing on twitter, even though I’ve deleted my account. Last time I checked they no longer publicly showed those profiles. Now I know why and am cool with this! πŸ™Œ

PointyFluff

@sysop408

I nominate Musk to be the NEW CEO of OceanGate!

M_Robinson

@sysop408 thought the same thing when I saw "My Twitter" trending with over a million tweets.

costrike

@sysop408 πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ€£πŸ€£πŸ€£πŸ€£ imma need oxygen

Sherean ✍️

@sysop408 I don't get the rate limited message. I get "sorry, tweets won't load" every damn time. πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ

Jay :verified:

@sysop408 elmo: instead of someone else destroying it, I'll do it myself

Solution Hackeuse

@sysop408 Old joke but so accurate for Twitter πŸ˜†

AuetherProtogen

@sysop408 even when your logged in, you can’t see any replies, or what a tweet is replying to. As well as tweets, likes, replies ect on people’s profiles

Sam Wronski

@sysop408 They did it again? What on Earth?

This is the same thing that took down their Auth portal a few months ago.

John

@sysop408 I read this as the government/ rich people want Twitter down for whatever reason.

bandwagoner

@sysop408 this is funny, a couple days ago twitter dot com was using up a full CPU core whenever the right sidebar was onscreen. i could turn it off by resizing my window

i just started blocking elements in the right sidebar with uBlock Origin until the CPU usage went away πŸ‘Œ

chevelle67

@sysop408

is that what`s going on ?? 😜 I thought it was cause I
would $$$ for my blue check

Xather πŸ©·πŸ’œπŸ’™

@sysop408 So did this DDOS attack spur on Musk now restricting how many posts people can see on Twitter?

MacramΓ© Owl

@sysop408
I just learned that if you don't have a blue check, you're limited to viewing 300 tweets a day. New feature to "improve" Twitter. Watch the advertising hemorage.

MacramΓ© Owl

@sysop408 But a DDOS attack is way more cool than me being blocked 'til tomorrow πŸ˜‚

Sheldon Chang πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ

@MustachioedFish even better, it's because some idiot put the self-destruct button next to the shields-up button.

beforewisdom πŸ––

@sysop408

It is amazing that Twitter under Musk has lasted this long.

Paul Sutton

@sysop408

So is this RIP twitter or just good riddance ?

Daniel AJ Sokolov

@sysop408 Hahahaha, this will be one of the funniest chapters in the book about the Twitter self destruct.

Kiss.My.Grits

@sysop408 I was listening to a podcast last week, and the show's guest hypothesized that Elon is destroying Twitter on purpose. I thought it was an interesting idea. He has effectively silenced the voices that have been pushing back against authoritarianism in America and abroad. Those voices are moving off the platform and are much less visible for the time being.

That being said, Elon is still an attention-starved, idiotic troll.

jtb

@sysop408 It's worse than that, he's limited the number of tweets free users can view to 600 per day.

bbc.co.uk/news/technology-6607

Smellbringer

@sysop408 Not to worry though guys, Elon is totally a genius... lol.

Pieter Ouwerkerk

@sysop408 fortunately he's an expert in building high availability systems

Thomas la Cour Jansen

@sysop408 fortunately Twitter is not a company sending people into space or making self-driving cars…

KWierso

@sysop408 I was getting CORS failures from twitter.com subdomains like api.twiiter.com last night. Good times.

Candace Robb

@sysop408 Yesterday it wouldn't log out on my desktop, but when I checked it on my phone it had logged me out on the desktop. I've only been using it for work, so I really don't care. Mastodon is where I come for conversations, information, inspiration.

Jamessteel2008

@sysop408 he’s finally killed Twitter, I will miss the great people I have made friends with but he’s not getting a penny from me.

Carl Karcher

@sysop408

But he saved money on Google cloud services!

PG&E Delenda Est

@sysop408 I am pretty certain this is the chain of events that got us here:
1) elon fires all the SREs and network engineers because they're the most expensive and he'll just voluntell starlink ones.
2) elon deletes sacramento data center to save money, pushing traffic to the two other ones
3) bills for the other two data centers go up
4) elon demands to know where traffic is coming from and is given an excel spreadsheet showing it's unauthed users (read: front page)
5) you are here

Kainoa / Calc

@sysop408@sfba.social it's really funny, but it's a DoS, not a DDoS. DoS = denial of service, DDoS = distributed denial of service (aka, from multiple sources working together to take down a service)

Maleficent Witch

@sysop408 I deleted the Twitter app from my phone. Next step, downloading my profiles and saying goodbye forever.

Laura Hunsaker

@sysop408 he’s just decided he doesn’t want people to be on twitter I guess?

THiNKTaNKπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡ΌπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΉπŸ‡­πŸ‡Ήβ˜ͺ

@sysop408 That's what happens when narcissistic entrepreneur/CEOs come in, fire the PROs, replace them with cult fans and amateurs & start westing out only to hit: !

As I advise whenever I get the chance:

❢ Twitter is Now Reduced To Narcissist Run, Badly Led Ning SiteπŸ”΄bit.ly/3VePfdn

❷ Algorithm Rigged AFπŸ”΄rb.gy/7pse7

❸ Nobody's SafeπŸ”΄bit.ly/43h7B20

❹ Leave If You Can Afford ToπŸŸ₯bit.ly/3L3wZ2Oβ–Ό

Bill Reyor :donor:

@sysop408 how to drive your company Into the ground 101

Siju

@sysop408 just glad it’s given me the push to leave that platform.

n3wjack

@sysop408 so much for testing in production πŸ˜‚

Mark Tomczak

@sysop408 FUN FACT: Running every request through an auth check is way more expensive than letting data be served to anonymous access.

Of course, they wouldn't just activate auth on every request without load-testing that, right?! ;)

Theosuwb

@sysop408 we can thank Elon for that! I will never go back to twitter!

Conor

@sysop408 @bigzaphod ironically crashed to home screen viewing the video in @ivory

Eric Swanson

@sysop408 Am I right, then, to think that his attempts to restrict unverified users will only make the problem worse, perhaps exponentially?

Stevie

@sysop408 Apparently they’re limiting views 🀦🏻 You get some more view if you’ve a blue tick πŸ™„

serklarvel

@sysop408 I just can't wait for the billionaires Mars trips that Space X will offer, it will be terrific

Menno Stevens

@sysop408 Yes, proof!
I already expected something like that.
You have to know the effect of Retry, machine or user driven. And user behaviour is hard.

az

@sysop408 Not self own, just a brilliant idea by elmo

P J Evans

@sysop408
I'm logged in and it isn't loading pages. Started about 11am PDT.

kel

@sysop408

Incredible!

I am not one to laugh at anyone's misfortune, not even people who deserve it, not really, I am more inclined towards pity; but even I had an uncontrollable outburst on seeing this!

Thank you for sharing πŸ˜€

I sincerely hope the people who are there, especially the ones who may feel trapped somehow, have a better one tomorrow!

tef
@sysop408 not getting this here, what are the exact conditions you did this in?
Charles Corbett

@sysop408 oh I'm sure the engineers envisioned it. They just don't get a say πŸ˜‚

troystevens

@sysop408 Twitter is throttling itself and blaming the users. πŸ˜‚

Serge

@sysop408 It’s. Beautiful. Literally. Tears. Smile. Thanks sysop. Needed that.

the Wisest ofGuys

@sysop408 it's causing issues with my wifi and this explains it. Thx

Karen kelly

@sysop408 it’s crazy !! I can see it on my I pad but not on my phone

EwanBert

@sysop408
Rumoured Google hosting contract ran out on Thursday midnight πŸ€·β€β™‚οΈ

SpainCo

@sysop408

Do we have anything other than his comments that it was a code change?

It's the start of the fiscal year, there's a non zero chance they just didn't pay a bill and a vendor is throttling something important

Rev. GothAlice

@sysop408 HTTP status code 420 all day, 'cause memes.

"All Systems Operational"

Elon sure is the king of dank memes.

Nathan Veenstra

@sysop408 to be honest, this is kind of ironic πŸ˜…

Cypher

@sysop408 it's almost like you actually need engineers permanently on staff

Matt Ferrel

@sysop408 I just went to Twitter for the first time in a long while to post this pic comment on every tweet complaining about this

km321

@sysop408 I’m sure this would have been caught if they still had a test team.

Carlos Zacharioudakis

@sysop408 I'm starting to see why his Tesla's are a complete failure

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