Usually I try not to talk about Reddit on Hubski and vice versa, mainly because if I want to be talking about one site, I'll be on it, not using a different site to do so. But, something's up with Reddit. Looks like they are suffering a malicious DDOS. Wonder if anyone had any clue what was up, or why?
the /r/askreddit thread (which I won't link to, considering the site is already overloaded) has some delusions of grandeur in answering that question, I think. many users believe the FBI is behind it to prevent the Boston bombing suspect(s) from getting information from an effort on /r/news to keep everyone updated. the source of those updates, though, is a police scanner in the Boston area, so it seems more likely that the suspect would listen to that before relying on Reddit, which is a few minutes behind it, was already running slowly due to traffic, and could be posting misinformation. Reddit has ceased posting information about police coordinates, which seems a good idea regardless. some believe it's the media, embarrassed that Reddit's coverage is superior to CNN, MSNBC, etc. I can't say for sure, but I'd rather wait for some evidence before jumping to conclusions as grandiose as those.
Yeah, that's pretty intense. Whenever theories like that come up, my question is usually how do you justify the importance of the conspiracy. Overwhelmingly, from my perspective, the theorists seem very convinced of their own importance to whoever is supposedly perpetuating the conspiracy - when in practice, the why usually isn't there. ("Why are you so important that someone is going to perpetuate a conspiracy around you?") Reddit strikes me as such.
It's almost certainly /b/, wouldn't be surprised if I heard they'd claimed it -- and that's exactly why they're doing it. I also agree that most of reddit is in r/news for the thrill or whatever, but it's been a genuine help in understanding the situation for some of us.
If @redditstatus didn't say they were getting DDOSed I would think it was traffic from the Boston thread in /r/news. There were a couple of sites scraping comments from those threads to make live feeds, it could be they were written in a hurry and making requests too frequently.