[derex]

Internal politics. Anecdotes are that org leaders face potentially serious consequences if the products they’re responsible for are down per status page. So they find ways to cover it up. This culture is passed top down as everyone is incentivized to downplay widespread outage.

[nathanaldensr]

Yep, the actual problem is lies about service uptime in marketing content or during contract negotiations. "Well, all of our competitors claim five nines so we have to, too."