2026-09-10 - Update on Recent Outages

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/66524166

Good day SJW community,

I wanted to provide everyone with an update regarding the stability issues we experienced over the past 24 hours.

Beginning Wednesday, September 9, we observed a significant spike in incoming requests originating from a large number of IP addresses associated with networks operated by Baidu, Tencent and OneCable Network LLC.

The traffic patterns pointed to coordinated web scraping activity distributed across large IP ranges. This approach allowed the scrapers to circumvent the per-IP rate limits we have in place by spreading requests across many different addresses. The requests were primarily targeting comments and post content, suggesting the activity was focused on large-scale data collection, potentially for AI model-related purposes.

We identified this activity by analyzing traffic patterns at the Autonomous System Number (ASN) level and reviewing the average number of requests per minute generated by each network.

At the same time, we identified a separate source of abnormal traffic that appeared to be coming from another actor. These requests were performing expensive search queries that placed significant load on the server and affected its ability to respond to legitimate requests in a timely manner.

This traffic was using the following user agent:

NexusGlobalBot/2.0 (SupabaseEdgeRuntime/1.76.0)

After blocking this agent and its associated request patterns, we observed a significant reduction in server load, bringing utilization much closer to normal operating levels.

This is not the first time we have encountered this type of activity over the past several months and unfortunately, it is unlikely to be the last. We will continue improving our monitoring, rate limiting, and mitigation measures to reduce the impact of abusive or excessive automated traffic while maintaining reliable access for legitimate users.

Thank you for your continued support and trust.