Read Fastly's statement. There is nothing about it blaming the customer(s) at all. There is nothing trying to save face.
What is your point here?
Is it necessary to refer to "a customer" at all in this statement? What would be problematic if the above were rewritten as something like:
> Early June 8, a configuration change triggered a bug in our software, which caused 85% of our network to return errors.
The advantage is that you wouldn't get ignorant reporting that "one customer took down the internet". I'm not sure there are disadvantages that net outweigh that.
That’s how autopsies work. You describe the cause and resolution. The cause was a bug in the customers control panel.
They’re not trying to absolve themselves of responsibility.
The important adjective "valid" means it was completely normal/expected input and thus not the fault of the customer.
It's perfectly clear you've come at this with a pre-determined agenda of "I bet fastly, like most other public statements after corporate booboos I've seen, will try to shrug this one off as someone else's fault" after reading the BBCs title and haven't bothered to read it at all until now.
Verbatim from Fastly: https://www.fastly.com/blog/summary-of-june-8-outage
There is no customer blaming here. None at all.
That's literally what happened. They even say it was a valid configuration change, it's very blameless.
Saying "a configuration change" loses critical context. I would have assumed that this was in some sort of deployment update, not something that a customer could trigger. Why would you want less information here?
I'll fully retract my statement. This is 100% the BBC's fault, 0% Fastly's.
Can I make one small suggestion that might help to prevent this kind of misleading reporting in future, though? What if Fastly produce the detailed statement they have, with as much accurate technical detail as possible AND a more general public-facing statement that organisations such as the BBC can use for reporting, that doesn't include such detailed information that can easily be misconstrued?
edit: FWIW I had a very negative initial reaction to the headline as well.
It's not limited to one specific customer (i.e this customer isn't the only customer who could have caused the issue, presumably), but it _was_ something the customer (legitimately) did. It wasn't a server outage. It wasn't a fire. It wasn't a cut cable.
"a customer quite legitimately changing their settings (BBC: one fastly customer) had exposed a bug (BBC: triggered internet meltdown) in a software update issued to customers (fastly admitting, when combined with 'legitimately', that fastly are at fault) in mid-May".
Whatever happened to nuanced opinion, where you can see good and bad in the same entity? Why do some people insist so strongly on absolutes?
Here's some excerpts:
Fastly, the cloud-computing company responsible for the issues, said the bug had been triggered when one of its customers had changed their settings.
Fastly senior engineering executive Nick Rockwell said: "This outage was broad and severe - and we're truly sorry for the impact to our customers and everyone who relies on them."
But a customer quite legitimately changing their settings had exposed a bug in a software update issued to customers in mid-May, causing "85% of our network to return errors", it said.
The headline accurately portrays the story given the limit on headlines.
The wording which was actually used makes it clear that that was not the case.