Slashdot Mirror
Online Petition Site Crashed By Millions of 'Cancel Brexit' Signers (time.com)
"More than 3 million people have signed a petition to cancel Brexit on the U.K. government's official petitions website -- so many that the website crashed multiple times," reports Time:
The petition had received some 600,000 signatures at a rate of 1,500 every 60 seconds before the site crashed at about 9 a.m. U.K. time on Thursday, the Guardian reported. By mid afternoon, the site was back online but suffering intermittent outages. There were 2 million signatures by Thursday evening and 3 million by midday Friday...
The U.K. government must now allow a debate on the petition's contents in parliament.
The Guardian notes that the CTO of company that built the petition site had bragged in a tweet Wednesday that the 1,000 signatures per minute was "Not too bad, but nowhere near crashing the site --you all need to try harder tomorrow."
By the next morning he had tweeted âoeWell done everyone -- the site crashed because calculating the trending count became too much of a load on the database."
The U.K. government must now allow a debate on the petition's contents in parliament.
The Guardian notes that the CTO of company that built the petition site had bragged in a tweet Wednesday that the 1,000 signatures per minute was "Not too bad, but nowhere near crashing the site --you all need to try harder tomorrow."
By the next morning he had tweeted âoeWell done everyone -- the site crashed because calculating the trending count became too much of a load on the database."
Signatures to the petition aren't verified as being British citizens and it doesn't prevent multiple voting. This has been demonstrated by newspapers. Analysis has already shown a large number of signatures from outside the UK, including North Korea and Russia.
1500 divided by 60 equals an average of 25 hits per second.
Shouldn't even a low-end Raspberry Pi Zero be able to handle that?
Let me guess: the fucking page was trying to push 1MB of HTML, 2MB of CSS, 5MB of javascript and 10MB of images for each page hit?
#DeleteFacebook
If you RTFS, you would know it was the ever changing trend analysis that brought them down.
They most certainly could have done better, but there's no indication it had anything to do with pushing static assets.
More than 4 million sign Brexit petition to revoke article 50.
See the Petition. 4,392,160 signatures at Saturday, March 23, 2019, 09:11 am Pacific Time.
My point is that we had a vote, then had a second vote.
Parliament sabotaging the entire fucking process of leaving the EU combined with a Government incapable of negotiating affection in a brothel means that many people now think leaving wont work and want a third fucking vote.
How about instead of wasting time and resources on that we get the fuck on with leaving the EU.
Yes, looking out for your own interests is selfish. It's something all humans do, called self-preservation. Why you try to say that's a bad thing just proves that you are being disingenuous.
Selfishness is a bad thing when it's taken to an illogical extreme. Suggesting otherwise is socially retarded.
I assume you're from a country that would BENEFIT from the UK staying in the EU, so you're doing the same thing.
Everyone but perhaps Russia and China will benefit if the UK stays in the EU, including the UK.
The free ride is over, the EU is dead, and the world government they want is going down the toilet.
The UK is not providing a free ride to the EU. They are getting quite a bit.
Fuck off, scum.
Run along, kid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
17 million voted to the EU and in the second vote (which we've already had, something the petitioners dishonestly ignore) 25 million voted for political parties that had 'leave the EU' in their party manifesto.
So forgive me if I ignore the constant stream of selfish stupid people demanding that we ignore the democratic wishes of the UK population. Perhaps instead they should focus on removing the hundreds of MPs doing their best to overturn that democracy.
Quite. Let Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK and remain in the EU as their population wants and let the UK become the United Kingdom of England and Wales. Put the hard Border at UK Scotland and France. Solves the NI backstop issue as NI would now be an independent country in the EU.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The first vote was tainted by flawed information, lies essentially, presented to the distracted public. It barely won. Yes, a new referendum is a good idea, one based on new, rock-solid (and very economically sobering) information.
Don't be retarded. If your defense is you had a vote, another vote should not be a threat.
I posted this comment. It has been modded down: The British government is VERY poorly managed.
One example: The EU leave campaign has dishonesty at its core-- and it hasn't convinced us. (Mar. 11, 2016, not 2019)
Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU (Jan. 31, 2019)
In general, the British government has presented low-level details, and not generally helped citizens have a serious, in-depth understanding.
Parliament can't be said to have "Sabotaged" a process flawed by false information from the start... they said millions of dollars was going to be saved on healthcare alone, to make no mention of the trade/border issues. It's a clusterfuck.
Parliament rightfully dragged their feet in coming to impossible(!) realizations that there IS NO GOOD SOLUTION to do it like this. May tried, you can't say she didn't try. In the end the EU said "no, go fuck yourselves, no free lunch."
And that's where it stands now, you're either in or you're out. There's no halfway gray option. Renegotiate the entire thing, or stay in. Those are the choices now.
The people didn't get a vote on that. They were promised a bill of goods that was never possible, and further an unrealistic pretend-option that didn't ever exist about a soft-exit from the EU that wouldn't break the bank.
No deal = breaks the bank, the borders, the everything. It's retarded to say people voted to do that. Retarded.
What is the EU and how does it work? An un-dated explanation by the BBC. (Before the end of 2017.)
In two years they went from "easiest trade deal, we hold all the cards, germany has to sell us cars, have our cake and eat it" to "we always knew our economy would crash and we would lose jobs, we never promised a deal, we will survive just like the blitz".
Fucking idiots and grifters all of them.
Typically, online petitions and opinion polls only have a tiny participation rate. Not everybody has readily available internet access, not everybody follow the media, and most importantly, not everybody bothers to get involved, even if it is in their own interest. This means, seeing 4+M signatures equals a much much bigger actual number of voters. And as is, the petition already represents about a quarter of the people who voted to "remain" in the referendum. That's significant. It suggests that there is a groundswell of support for remaining in the EU.
The petition site isn't run by some shady online opinion poll. It's run by the UK parliament. According to a spokeperson, it actively filters submissions to detect bot activity. At the very least, it requires a unique name, verified (!) e-mail address and UK postal address. Some unconfirmed reports also state that it requires a UK passport number (maybe, that only happens for suspect submissions?). The UK parliament trusts that these numbers are substantially accurate.
That's huge. It means anybody saying "the will of the people" is to continue with Brexit is blatantly lying to themselves and to the rest of the world.
Thatâ(TM)s not what happens today. FUD is doing a good job of helping those destructive to society get in power and stay in power. In the meantime a well researched stance is screamed at for being elitist, left wing, supporting already defeated candidates and non-patriotic
Donâ(TM)t underestimate the power of the misinformed populist vote. It has hurt the US, the UK and other countries.
"Oh, if only our citizens had been correctly informed, they would never have voted for Brexit!"
That seems to be the defining rationale for all the dissent in the UK today, and it's complete and total bullocks. It's used as justification by people who didn't get their way to make the transition as painful as possible with the faint hope of reversing the decision.
Firstly, leaving the EU is objectively a better decision than staying, from an economic, cultural, and game-theory point of view. The economic arguments for staying are based on invalid assumptions(*), and in practice staying in the EU is causing more economic hardship than staying.
The arguments against leaving center mostly on the transition, and not the end result. It's always what will happen "in the next 6 months" or "in the following year" and whatnot. No one will admit that the UK could voluntarily implement all the agreements it currently has with the EU - such as unrestricted travel between nations - and there would be little hardship.
But mostly, the argument that "not enough correct information got out" and "people would have chosen differently with better information" is completely false.
Most people simply don't think what people tell them to think any more, and instead they rely on what they can see. So let's examine this: what do the UK people actually see when they look around their country nowadays?
The UK culture has undergone a massive shift these past 30 years, and the people are not happy with the results. Teens are stabbed every week in London, people are being arrested for online criticism, jobs are hard to come by, and different-culture people are everywhere.
That's what drove the vote to Brexit and if you held the referendum again you would find *more* people would vote for it, simply because the changes have become worse in the past 2 years.
I suppose the single most obvious culture shift indication was in the police: in previous decades, bobbies didn't have to carry guns. Nowadays UK police they are armed and armored like US swat teams.
Your opinion and votes matter more than ever. We should not need to resort to demeaning opponents (dead or alive) to try to make our arguments. Taking time to understand what scares a person will likely help make a better argument for trying to win them over.
You are giving the people too little credit. Making them "not scared" by talking or presenting information or reasoning simply won't work. You can only make people "not scared" by making them safer. No amount of argument will change that basic fact.
You give the people of the UK to little credit. They chose, and even if you don't agree with it you should abide by that choice.
(*) For example, the assumption that a bigger pool of workers and jobs makes for a better economy. When the countries are economically equal it works out - a dental hygenist in the UK can get a good job in Germany, and vice versa. When this assumption doesn't holds true the better country gets pulled down - a dental hygienist in Greece can get a good job in the UK, but the reverse isn't true. The result is massive unemployment in the UK while high-paying jobs are filled with non-UK citizens. A large number of assumptions - which turn out to be false - underlie the economic arguments for being in the EU.
You are seriously misrepresenting the facts. First of all, it is highly unlikely that all the people who voted in the referendum would also sign the petition. In fact, it is amazing that so many people did sign. That's pretty much unprecedented. Participation rates in online petitions are traditionally tiny compared to actual referenda and elections. And the UK parliament assures everybody that the petition actively filters out bot activity. So, we have to assume that the numbers are close to accurate.
Secondly, the petition is just that. It is a petition. It doesn't invalidate the non-binding referendum. It asks parliament to do their job and to actually confirm that "the will of the people" is in fact to leave the EU, as Theresa May keeps pretending. And from the numbers presented so far, I personally doubt that the vast part of the population shares that believe. It's just that Brexiteers are louder -- and parliament seems to have their fingers in their ears. So, if they hear anything over their own self-imposed din, it's the loud voices.
Typically, online petitions and opinion polls only have a tiny participation rate.
So do referendums, but the one to leave the EU was the largest vote in favour of any issue in the history of the country.
By this logic you already had a vote in 1972. But yes, get the fuck out already.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
a bit more liberty-impinging bureaucracy every year, all for a taste of that radiant socialist future that's always just around the corner!
The UK is one of the most government camera-dense locations on the planet, and a member of five eyes. The UK is that thing you described with or without the EU.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...most of those fervent "down-voters" couldn't be arsed to get out of their chairs and actually vote back when IT COUNTED.
Sadly, in real life you don't get a "do over" just because you weren't paying attention the first time, or because you're on the (to you and ALL YOUR FRIENDS) "right" side.
I'm guessing, of course, but if the groundswell so "universally" portrayed today had actually voted, Brexit would have gone down without question.
-Styopa
I do find it interesting how twisted truth becomes reality so easily. No liberal or indeed, any other faction had anything to do with stopping a second vote on the same motion.
There is a long standing tradition in the UK parliament that members of parliament can not vote on the same motion twice in the same sitting of parliament. This is to stop a government crippling parliament by re-submitting the same issue over an dover again. This tradition is applied nregularly in the house of commons but nobody ever hears about it because few people actually pay attention to what is going on in parliament.
All that happened in this case is that the government were reminded that parliament will not vote on the same bill twice in one parliament.
Dunno about begging but if they have sense they'll rejoin and it'll result in stronger EU for all. Short term Brexit will be bad for all, but Brits need to get it out of their system, canceling Brexit at this point would not be good idea, it would come back to haunt everyone in a year or few. Once the dust settles a better path forward can be agreed upon.
It's not Parliament's fault, it's May's fault. She didn't have a realistic plan, just some intractable red lines that completely fucked up the negotiations and ensured she would get a deal that everyone hated. Her priority has always been her legacy, and by extension keeping her party together, not getting a good outcome for the UK.
Parliament hasn't exactly covered itself in glory either, but May could easily have avoided all this be agreeing a realistic proposal for leaving with Parliament before triggering Article 50.
Cancelling is the best option now. If someone wants to try again let them put a very specific proposal in their manifesto and then before Parliament first, then we can trigger Article 50 again.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Clearly Parliament should declare Lord Buckethead Lord Protector and the problems will be resolved.
No need to dissolve parliament. Simply undo the Restoration.
So do referendums, but the one to leave the EU was the largest vote in favour of any issue in the history of the country.
The UK has had a total of 3 country wide referendums. The largest turnout was for the the leave referendum. The second largest was for the stay referendum in 1975. Incidentally the number of people who voted to remain in the EU in 1975 differs by less than 20000 from those who voted to leave in 2016, which actually reminds me: Why did the leave campaigners re-vote on the issue multiple times until they got the answer they wanted, and why are they so afraid of another vote now?
In 1975 the UK did not vote to remain in the EU. They voted to stay in the EEC, a common trading block.
Don't be obtuse. The EC was effectively the EU in everything but name. Just because the Maastricht Treaty wasn't signed until 1992 and the name EU wasn't formally adopted by then doesn't mean that the EEC wasn't in nearly every way what the EU is now, quite specifically ...
I think there would be strong support now to stay in a strong trading group with other European nations.
Don't be silly. The EEC wasn't just a trading group. It was a trading group with strict rules, higher courts, laws that govern trading members, membership fees, and (although in the 70s labour wasn't part of it) they comply with the 4 inseparable tenants of the EU. I don't know why you think there is any support for this in the UK. The only support you'll find is among remainders who are trying to soften the blow of leaving.
Unfortunately the EU doesn't want to offer that, instead demanding political control too.
The EU did nothing of the sort, and it wasn't the EU's decision. It's the decision of the EEC and it was quite specifically the non-EU members that said "hell no" to the UK joining. It's also not the EU which has political control over the EEC as much as the Scandinavian countries.
There has only ever been one referendum on the EU itself
Actually there was no referendum on the EU. It is painfully clear that in 2016 the referendum was on the choice of ???? and ???? and well let's just vote no because we're pissed at the government without any actual clue but at least we get to fund the NHS.
It's been all over the news n and off and you act like it never happened. No wonder you support Brexit: reality just doesn't fit your worldview.
https://www.theguardian.com/co...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/po...
https://www.electoralcommissio...
Now I'm sure you'll either uiently slink away and pretend you never commented ot tell me why electon fraud is jsut fine really and we should honour the results of a tainted election.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Breaking election finance rules is not fraud. Stop talking shit.
Yes it is. If the election was a binding referendum then by the UK rules it would have ot be rerun.
Now I'd like you to:
1. stop talking shit
2. Stop undermining democracy by following results of tainted elections.
SJW n. One who posts facts.