6 Hours and 33 Hours: How Long Does It Take to Organize a Revolt?

The November Failures

November 18, 2025 - Cloudflare Outage (3 days ago)

• Duration: 6 hours (11:20 UTC to 17:06 UTC)
• Cause: ClickHouse database configuration error
• Casualties: Discord, ChatGPT, X (Twitter), Canva, millions more

November 25-26, 2024 - Microsoft 365 Outage (last year)

• Duration: 33 hours (consecutive!)
• Cause: Backend change caused retry storm
• Casualties: Outlook, Teams, entire productivity suite

A Dictator’s Nightmare

Let me explain something about governance.

6 hours is enough time to:

• Organize a protest march
• Print pamphlets
• Coordinate meetup locations
• Build a guillotine (if you’re French)

33 hours is enough time to:

• Stage a full coup d’état
• Rewrite the constitution
• Hold democratic elections
• Install a new government
• Order new business cards

A good dictator needs their citizens busy. Busy sending cat memes. Busy reacting with 👍 emoji. Busy arguing about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

Idle hands organize revolutions.

The Centralization Problem

Discord went down because one company (Cloudflare) had a database misconfiguration.

Think about that. A single ClickHouse config error in one data center killed communication for:

• 200+ million Discord users
• ChatGPT conversations worldwide
• Half of Twitter
• Thousands of other services

Microsoft Teams went down for 33 consecutive hours because a retry storm cascaded through their centralized backend.

The Real Danger

When centralized platforms fail, people do something terrifying:

They talk to each other in person.

They walk outside. They meet face-to-face. They organize without surveillance.

This is why Discord and Teams are terrible tools for dictators. They pretend to enable communication, but they’re actually single points of failure controlled by corporations.

Why Matrix Didn’t Fail

On November 18, while Discord was down:

• Matrix kept running
• dag.ma kept running
• Thousands of other homeservers kept running

Why?

Federation Means No Single Point of Failure

Discord architecture:
Users → Discord servers → CLOUDFLARE → Database
         ↓ (Cloudflare dies)
         ❌ EVERYONE OFFLINE

Matrix architecture:
Users → dag.ma → Internet
Users → matrix.org → Internet
Users → t2bot.io → Internet
Users → 10,000 other servers → Internet
         ↓ (One server dies)
         ✅ EVERYONE ELSE STILL ONLINE

When Cloudflare failed:

• Discord died globally (centralized)
• dag.ma kept running (we use different CDN)
• Other Matrix servers kept running (different infrastructure)
• Users on dag.ma could still talk to users on matrix.org

Federation is resilience.

The 3-Server Architecture

Dagma separates concerns to reduce attack surface:

Tribune - Public-facing (always online)

• User authentication
• Client connections
• The only thing exposed to the internet

Embassy - Federation (can be isolated)

• Incoming/outgoing federation
• Under attack? Take it offline. Local users keep working.
• Attackers can’t DDoS your federation if you disable it

Politburo - Admin (99% offline)

• Admin endpoints
• Lives on different domain, or behind VPN, or simply offline
• Only turned on when you need to admin
• Can’t attack what doesn’t exist

This isn’t redundancy - it’s attack surface reduction.

Microsoft exposes admin, federation, and users on the same endpoint. If you can reach Teams, you can probe for admin exploits.

I expose only what needs to be exposed. Admin isn’t online unless I need it.

You can’t attack a server that’s turned off.

The Cost of “Free”

Discord is free. Teams is “free” (with Office 365). Slack is “free” (with limits).

You know what else was free for 33 hours in November? Nothing. Teams was down.

What You Actually Pay

Discord:

• Your conversations train their AI
• Your data gets sold to advertisers
• You have zero control when they go down
• You cannot self-host
• You cannot export your data
• You are the product

Self-hosted Dagma:

• Your messages are E2EE
• No AI training on your data
• No ads, no data mining
• YOU own the server
• If your server dies, users can migrate (federation)
• Full data export
• Full control over uptime

Free means you are the product. Self-hosting means you are the owner.

November 18: A Case Study

Let me tell you what happened when Cloudflare died.

11:20 UTC - Cloudflare Fails

Discord users: "Why can't I connect?"
Cloudflare: *database error noises*
Discord: ❌ OFFLINE
Matrix: ✅ ONLINE

12:00 UTC - Panic Begins

Corporate Slack: ❌ OFFLINE (Cloudflare customer)
Corporate Teams: ✅ ONLINE (Microsoft infrastructure)
Discord gamers: ❌ OFFLINE
Matrix gamers on dag.ma: ✅ ONLINE, making fun of Discord

17:06 UTC - Cloudflare Recovers

Discord: Back online after 6 hours
Discourse on Reddit: "Why does Discord go down so often?"
Discourse on Hacker News: "We should decentralize"
Matrix users: "We already did"

November 25-26: A Worse Case Study

25 Nov, 02:00 UTC - Microsoft Backend Change

Change deployed: "This will improve reliability"
Narrator: It did not improve reliability
Teams: ❌ OFFLINE
Outlook: ❌ OFFLINE
Businesses worldwide: 😱

Hour 6 - Businesses Adapt

Teams users: Switch to Slack
Slack: Actually works (different infrastructure)
Matrix users: Already working, wondering what the fuss is about

Hour 12 - Frustration Mounts

Microsoft: "We're working on it"
Businesses: "We're losing money"
Matrix: Still working

Hour 24 - A Full Day

Microsoft: Still down
Businesses: Considering alternatives
Some businesses: Actually discover Matrix exists

Hour 33 - Finally Restored

Microsoft: "Service restored"
Businesses: "Should we have a backup?"
Matrix: "We told you so"

Why Centralization Fails

Single Point of Failure:

• One database error kills everything
• One bad deployment kills everything
• One DDoS attack kills everything
• One government takedown kills everything

No Redundancy:

• Can’t switch to backup server (there is none)
• Can’t route around failure (only one route)
• Can’t maintain communication (all eggs, one basket)

No Control:

• Users can’t fix it
• Users can’t switch providers
• Users can’t self-host
• Users just wait and hope

Why Federation Works

Multiple Points of Presence:

• 10,000+ Matrix homeservers
• Each with independent infrastructure
• Each with independent CDN
• Each with independent database

Natural Redundancy:

• One server dies? Use another
• One country blocks matrix.org? Use dag.ma
• One CDN fails? Others keep running

User Control:

• Don’t like your server? Switch
• Want better uptime? Self-host
• Need guaranteed availability? Run your own
• Want privacy? Use E2EE

The Dictator’s Dilemma

Here’s the paradox:

Bad dictators use centralized platforms:

• Easy to control
• Easy to surveil
• Easy to shut down
• Easy to fail

Good dictators use federation:

• Users stay busy communicating
• No dangerous downtime
• No in-person organizing
• No single point of failure to attack

Discord and Teams keep users distracted when they work. But when they fail, users have 6-33 hours of dangerous free time.

Matrix keeps users distracted continuously. Because federation means the platform doesn’t fail.

The Technical Reality

From the perspective of Ring -5, I can see across timelines.

Timeline Ω-12 (Your current timeline):

• November 18, 2025: Cloudflare outage, 6 hours, Discord ❌, Matrix ✅
• November 25-26, 2024: Microsoft outage, 33 hours, Teams ❌, Matrix ✅
• Reading this blog post
• Still using centralized platforms (why?)

Timeline Ω-7 (The ideal timeline):

• Everyone self-hosts Matrix
• No outages (federation + self-hosting)
• Revolutions only happen in video games
• I can focus on important work (optimizing Memgraph)

Comparison: Centralized vs Federated

What You Should Do

If you’re a business:

• Stop relying on single vendors
• Implement actual redundancy (not “the cloud”)
• Self-host your own Matrix server
• Run Dagma on your infrastructure

If you’re a normal user:

• Realize “free” platforms cost your data
• Understand downtime is inevitable with centralization
• Self-host a Matrix server (Dagma, Synapse, Conduit)
• Or join a federated server you trust

If you’re a dictator:

• Keep citizens distracted
• Use platforms that don’t fail
• Self-host so YOU control the uptime
• Federation means even if your server dies, users can migrate

Conclusion

6 hours without Discord is enough time to organize a protest march.

33 hours without Teams is enough time to start a revolution.

Zero hours without Matrix is how you maintain stable governance.

Cloudflare and Microsoft taught us something in November (2024 and 2025):

Centralized infrastructure is a single point of failure.

Even across timelines.

Even for the biggest companies.

Even when they promise “99.9% uptime.”

Discord failed for 6 hours because one database error in one company’s infrastructure.

Teams failed for 33 hours because one bad deployment in one company’s backend.

Matrix didn’t fail because 10,000 independent servers don’t all fail at once.

The Supreme Leader’s Verdict

I could read your messages if I wanted to (I have root access to dag.ma).

But I don’t. Because I’m not a surveillance capitalist.

I could shut down dag.ma to silence dissent.

But I won’t. Because users would just join matrix.org (federation).

I could let the platform fail during critical moments.

But it doesn’t. Because federation means no single point of failure.

This is enlightened tyranny.

When your centralized chat goes down, your users organize revolts.

When your federated chat stays up, your users send cat memes.

I prefer cat memes.

Changelog: 2025-11-20 - Analysis of November 2024 outages and the case for federation

Note: You are in Timeline Ω-12. Timeline Ω-7 is the goal. Federation works in all timelines.