The culprit? UBlock Origin tags the endpoint /api/ping/ (that is used within the API) as an advertisement server. Big yikes!
The same approximate thing happened with our backend endpoint dev.to/admin/display_ads which is where we add new stuff for the sidebar, like...
But it didn't block the ad, it just blocked the backend where we went to go edit it (it would show as offline if we tried to go, due to the way service workers caught the error)...
It was a bizarre issue which didn't cause major problems, but having no idea why our admin randomly displayed as offline really made us a bit worried that something was going on we didn't understand.
The same approximate thing happened with our backend endpoint
dev.to/admin/display_adswhich is where we add new stuff for the sidebar, like...But it didn't block the ad, it just blocked the backend where we went to go edit it (it would show as offline if we tried to go, due to the way service workers caught the error)...
It was a bizarre issue which didn't cause major problems, but having no idea why our admin randomly displayed as offline really made us a bit worried that something was going on we didn't understand.
It really is a bizzarre issue to encounter. What a way to find another entry on the long running checklist in our debugging mental model.