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# Twitter DoS and single points of failure
- URL: https://werd.io/twitter-dos-and-single-points-of-failure/
- Published: 2009-08-06T18:31:22.000Z
- Updated: 2025-06-12T11:00:53.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: Data control, #ben-684a32da145d7d001be71dae, Software development, Web, decentralized social networks, denial of service, facebook, twitter, #Migrated-1749693130536, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-06-11 21:52

Twitter [went down today](http://blog.twitter.com/2009/08/denial-of-service-attack.html) at the hand of a denial of service attack (alongside Facebook and Livejournal; the latter [has also reported an attack](http://www.appscout.com/2009/08/livejournal%5Falso%5Fconfirms%5Fdeni.php)). In the old days, you’d shrug it off and go and look at something else. Today, Twitter is such an integral part of the landscape, and some people’s businesses, that [it made BBC News](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8188201.stm) and was commented on [all over the Internet](http://www.techmeme.com/090806/p44#a090806p44).

The headlines are highly strung to say the least:

- [Twitter Attack Brings a Day Without Social Media](http://gawker.com/5331439/twitter-attack-brings-a-day-without-social-media) (Gawker)
- [A Day (Or Hour) Without Twitter Sucks](http://www.twitterrati.com/2009/08/06/a-day-or-hour-without-twitter-sucks/) (Twitterrati)
- [Twitter Goes Down, Down, Down](http://technologizer.com/2009/08/06/twitter-goes-down-down-down/) (Technologizer, who delightfully illustrated their post with an image of an anvil falling on a bird)

The stress of it all made TechCrunch come over all [Mr Humphries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5FInman):

- [Oooh Dramatic! Twitter Gets DDOSed](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/oooh-dramatic-twitter-gets-ddosed/)

Meanwhile, away from the hilarity, Dave Winer’s [developing rssCloud](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/06/rsscloudNews.html) and people are beginning to talk about [Laconi.ca](http://laconi.ca). The only model that makes sense is a distributed one: it’s a fundamentally harder problem to bring down a decentralized network, because there isn’t a single point of failure. So far, for example, DNS has remained pretty robust. As regular readers will know, I strongly believe there are very [solid business and development reasons](http://benwerd.com/2009/07/building-the-user-centered-web/) for going decentralized, too.

The web is becoming social, and those conversations are becoming more and more important. A malicious user or group shouldn’t be able to take down our conversation platform - or have the ability to dictate its direction. It’s time to think about a better way to build the social web.