At global scale would be a more sensible. 'At web scale' doesn't mean, 'With users from outside the US'.
re: "web scale" not implying/talking about global users... Do you know of anyone operating a web scale business that doesn't have global users? Even sites that are supposedly for US customers only (netflix, etc -- caused by regional licensing), still have non-US customers using proxies to bypass their geo filter...
Web scale /is/ global scale. :p
To reiterate: the number of users (scale) is irrelevant to the issue of problem names.
I can see why someone sprinkled buzzwords on the HN title that didn't exist anywhere in the article, and weren't applicable though. Makes the issue sound more 'techie'.
As for "buzzwords", if you deal at all with Google employees, this becomes an irritating mantra: systems that have less than a hundred million users are often considered "toys" (and, to be clear, I can totally understand why this would be this way to these people).
And yes: I think that the point that "this actually happens to everyone everywhere" is an interesting point, and was the first comment on this post by patio11. I found that a very interesting insight, as many of my examples are more "those cases that come up when dealing with a global user community full of interesting edge cases", which to me /defines/ "web scale".
Why, therefore, it matters at all that
these words "didn't exist anywhere in
the article" is beyond me.