The term is quite over used in my opinion, it is very often used in hyperbole. Whether it is in terms of popularity and driving traffic to a website or a threat said to break the Internet, it doesn’t seem to live up to the meaning of the term.

  • criitz@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    I don’t believe an event like that would have that impact today, though. The internet was still young then.

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.worldOP
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      11 months ago

      So, it would take an even more world-shattering event to overwhelm the Internet to the point that normal functions have to be downgraded to basic functions as a result.

      Is it even possible to overload the Internet in that way anymore?

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, let a nuclear bomb go off in any American city with over 50,000 residents.

        That would probably do it

        • Usernameblankface@lemmy.worldOP
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          11 months ago

          At that point, the EMP would wipe out some important components of the Internet as well as overloading whatever is not directly affected.

          • shalafi@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            LOL, the internet was invented specifically to route communications around nuclear bomb blasts.

            You got me wondering though, things have changed a lot since DARPANET. Taking out Amazon US-EAST-1 would leave a massive hole in the internet.

            • JDubbleu@programming.dev
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              11 months ago

              If you hit us-east-1 and us-west-2 I truly believe 95% of Western websites would not be fully functional. Most people either rely on, or rely on a service that in some way relies on those regions. Every time Lambda has gone down in IAD it takes with it many ordering applications and tons of physical badging systems around the country.

      • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        We might be safe from that insofar as… the only thing that would get the entire world’s attention that rapt is something that would also kill enough people that the servers wouldn’t get overloaded.