Petlibro accused of “gaslighting” users over smart pet feeder outage
Petlibro accused of “gaslighting” users over smart pet feeder outage
Petlibro 因智能宠物喂食器宕机被指控“煤气灯效应”式操纵用户
Petlibro founder and CEO York Wu provided more information about an outage that left users unable to control their smart pet feeders through the companion app and, in some reported cases, left them with hungry pets. Petlibro, a company owned by Shenzhen, China-headquartered firm Shenzhen Libro Technology Co., first acknowledged the outage on Tuesday at 5 am PT. At 7 pm PT on Wednesday, Petlibro said the outage was resolved. Notably, some people online reported different information at the time, and some claimed to still have problems as of August 13.
Petlibro 创始人兼首席执行官 York Wu 近日就此前发生的一起宕机事件提供了更多信息。该事件导致用户无法通过配套应用程序控制智能宠物喂食器，在某些报告案例中，甚至导致宠物挨饿。Petlibro 是总部位于中国深圳的深圳利博科技有限公司旗下的公司，该公司于太平洋时间周二凌晨 5 点首次承认了此次宕机。太平洋时间周三晚 7 点，Petlibro 宣布故障已修复。值得注意的是，当时一些网络用户反映的情况与官方说法不符，甚至有人声称截至 8 月 13 日仍存在问题。
In a blog post on Saturday that included an apology and acknowledgement of the “frustration and concern” the outage caused, Wu confirmed that problems with Petlibro’s cloud server caused the outage: The outage was due to cloud server issues that caused a backlog of data requests, overloading the system memory and bringing down device service in the process. After successfully restarting the cloud service, the backlog reoccurred and the system went down again. At that point, the team conducted systematic troubleshooting of the cloud service system, identified the underlying issue, patched a solution, and then closely monitored the slow upscale of traffic towards stable recovery. Because of this outage, the app was no longer able to connect to devices and as a result device communication was not possible. Services related to the app, including on-demand actions, operation history, records, notifications, and videos, were unavailable. Wu noted that Petlibro has “increased demand capacity” and is “preparing an audit protocol to search our backend and work to resolve any similar inconsistencies.”
在周六发布的一篇博客文章中，Wu 对此次宕机造成的“挫败感和担忧”表示歉意并予以承认。他证实，Petlibro 的云服务器问题是导致宕机的罪魁祸首：宕机是由于云服务器问题导致数据请求积压，进而使系统内存过载，导致设备服务中断。在成功重启云服务后，积压问题再次出现，系统再次崩溃。随后，团队对云服务系统进行了系统性排查，确定了根本原因，修补了漏洞，并密切监控流量的缓慢回升，以确保稳定恢复。由于此次宕机，应用程序无法连接到设备，导致设备通信中断。与应用程序相关的服务，包括按需操作、操作历史、记录、通知和视频等均无法使用。Wu 指出，Petlibro 已经“增加了需求容量”，并正在“准备一套审计协议，以检查我们的后端并努力解决任何类似的异常情况。”
Outage timeline
宕机时间线
Wu said that at 5:20 am PT on Tuesday, August 11, a “critical error occurred affecting app login and control.” At 6:20 am PT, “app functionality was restored, and the system began to process a large backlog of data requests resulting from the outage.” But 23 minutes later, “a flood of incoming requests overwhelmed connection capacity, and the system failed again,” per Wu. At 8:04 am PT “basic functionality was restored,” and Petlibro started restoring other services, Wu said. About an hour later, “the app’s loading time slowed,” so Petlibro decided to “scale back functionality,” the exec said. On Wednesday night, Petlibro’s “development team identified a cache issue and disabled service to remedy the issue,” and at 11:43 pm PT on Wednesday, “a solution to the cache issue was implemented, and service was reactivated.” “Over the course of the night, we continued to observe performance as more devices reconnected before returning to pre-failure levels the next morning,” Wu said. “While much of the service was restored by this point, we continued to operate in a crisis setting until we were able to experience a full cycle of demand to guarantee consistent performance.”
Wu 表示，太平洋时间 8 月 11 日周二凌晨 5:20，“发生了影响应用程序登录和控制的关键错误”。凌晨 6:20，“应用程序功能恢复，系统开始处理因宕机而积压的大量数据请求”。但 23 分钟后，据 Wu 称，“大量涌入的请求淹没了连接容量，系统再次崩溃”。Wu 说，太平洋时间上午 8:04，“基本功能恢复”，Petlibro 开始恢复其他服务。大约一小时后，“应用程序加载变慢”，因此 Petlibro 决定“缩减功能”。周三晚上，Petlibro 的“开发团队发现了一个缓存问题并禁用了服务以进行修复”，太平洋时间周三晚上 11:43，“缓存问题的解决方案得到实施，服务重新激活”。Wu 说：“在整个晚上，我们持续观察性能表现，随着更多设备重新连接，直到第二天早上恢复到故障前的水平。虽然此时大部分服务已经恢复，但我们仍处于危机应对状态，直到我们能够经历一个完整的需求周期，以确保性能稳定。”
Petlibro accused of “atrocious customer service”
Petlibro 被指控“客户服务极其恶劣”
During and after the outage, multiple people online claimed they were unaware that Petlibro was having technical difficulties for a time because they didn’t receive any emails from the company. One Reddit user subsequently accused the firm of “atrocious customer service.” Wu’s blog claims that during the outage, Petlibro “sent five emails to active customers with connected devices, posted four updates to both Reddit and Instagram.” Petlibro also created a status update page, which Wu said it will keep online.
在宕机期间及之后，多名网友声称他们一度不知道 Petlibro 出现了技术故障，因为他们没有收到该公司的任何电子邮件。随后，一位 Reddit 用户指责该公司“客户服务极其恶劣”。Wu 的博客声称，在宕机期间，Petlibro “向拥有已连接设备的活跃客户发送了五封电子邮件，并在 Reddit 和 Instagram 上发布了四次更新”。Petlibro 还创建了一个状态更新页面，Wu 表示该页面将保持在线。
One of the most intriguing aspects of the outage centers on Petlibro’s claims that its smart pet feeders perform scheduled feedings when offline, something that multiple purported users reported wasn’t the case during the outage. In his blog, Wu wrote: Our products are designed to carry out pre-scheduled routines like feeding and self-cleaning on their own, independent of the app, and this functioned for the vast majority of devices. We are actively reviewing isolated reports where a routine may not have performed as expected to determine if any secondary factors were involved.
此次宕机中最令人费解的问题之一，在于 Petlibro 声称其智能宠物喂食器在离线时仍能执行预定喂食，但多名用户报告称在宕机期间情况并非如此。Wu 在博客中写道：“我们的产品旨在独立于应用程序，自行执行预定的喂食和自动清洁等程序，绝大多数设备都实现了这一点。我们正在积极审查个别程序未按预期执行的报告，以确定是否涉及其他次要因素。”
Despite Wu’s post, there are users online seeking replacement pet feeders and criticizing Petlibro’s response. Due to conflicting reports regarding whether Petlibro emailed customers and scheduled feedings worked offline, some have accused the firm of “gaslighting” customers. “[D]on’t gaslight your users by downplaying the severity of the incident,” someone wrote in a discussion of Wu’s blog on the Petlibro Reddit community. “During a crisis, you should exaggerate the scale of the issue rather than downplaying it. Don’t tell people only a small number of users are affected. Don’t tell people offline schedules continued to run. Because if someone whose device is down, and they get that announcement, they will become irate.”
尽管 Wu 发布了声明，但仍有用户在网上寻求更换喂食器，并批评 Petlibro 的回应。由于关于 Petlibro 是否向客户发送邮件以及离线喂食功能是否正常工作的报告存在矛盾，一些人指责该公司对客户进行“煤气灯效应”式的操纵（即通过否认事实来让用户怀疑自己的判断）。在 Petlibro Reddit 社区关于 Wu 博客的讨论中，有人写道：“不要通过淡化事件的严重性来对用户进行煤气灯操纵。在危机期间，你应该夸大问题的规模，而不是淡化它。不要告诉人们只有少数用户受到影响。不要告诉人们离线计划仍在运行。因为如果设备宕机的用户看到这样的公告，他们会变得非常愤怒。”