Hacker News Reader

Well, and also, people probably googled "is facebook down", and clicked on the various carousel news stories.

Yeah the story that Facebook was down went viral. I don't think there's much deeper meaning to this beyond that.

How does that relate to mobile game traffic?

I'd wager so did HN and Pornhub. I don't think there's that much to news specifically, even if some love to push a certain narrative there.

For sure HN did; it was struggling to stay up from the load. Several threads were suggesting logging out -- which would let HN load static content -- to help it load, for example.

this seems right to me. would love to see a real analysis of what sort of traffic news sites saw.

my hunch is, yeah, maybe people had a look to see if the news confirmed their suspicions... but then maybe stayed a while and/or sought out alternatives for the ultimate distraction contraption.

Still a good thing.

Its not a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing, its just basic logic.

Same as saying people who wanted to go to the park did something else instead because the park was closed. Its not good or bad. It just 'is'.