January 10, 2026
Logs, drama, and a dogfight
Datadog, thank you for blocking us
Big Dog blocks, startup says ‘thanks’ — commenters cry PR stunt and warn about lock‑in
TLDR: Deductive says Datadog suddenly blocked their monitoring tools, prompting a fast break-up and a switch to open alternatives. The community is split between calling it PR theater and cheering the anti–vendor lock‑in lesson, with extra shade thrown at Datadog’s AI add‑on.
Datadog reportedly shut off Deductive’s account, killing the startup’s “observability” lifeline—the tools that show your app’s health like a car dashboard. Deductive’s blog spins it as a thank you moment: a forced break‑up proving you can switch fast, especially with open standards like OpenTelemetry. The crowd? Oh, they brought popcorn. Some called it “too perfect” marketing, hinting the story feels staged for an “AI ops” glow‑up. Others mocked the writing as LinkedIn‑bot cringe and asked if anyone actually got blocked or if this is just spicy storytelling.
On the other side, old‑school engineers cheered the anti‑lock‑in message: build your own dashboards, keep logs, metrics, and traces open, don’t let a vendor be your single point of failure. One commenter dunked on Datadog’s AI add‑on, calling it a gimmick compared to real competition, while skeptics wondered if this was about payment issues or terms of service—though the post says they were paying. The biggest split: Is this a cautionary tale or a crafted PR moment? Either way, the meme machine revved up with “Big Dog bites back” jokes and “thank u, next” vibes, and a reminder that a slick user interface doesn’t beat freedom. For context: APM means Application Performance Monitoring—aka the app checkup tools. Datadog’s UX? Still excellent. But the bill—and the lock‑in—sparked the flame.
Key Points
- •Deductive states its Datadog accounts and API keys were deactivated shortly after an account review notice on December 15, 2025.
- •Deductive used Datadog APM since February 2025 for production logs, metrics, traces, and performance data, unrelated to Bits AI.
- •The deactivation halted telemetry ingestion and caused immediate loss of visibility into production systems, according to Deductive.
- •Deductive highlights Datadog’s market leadership (Gartner 2025 Observability Magic Quadrant Leader) and strong UX, but claims costs were ~2–3x expected for equivalent telemetry storage/retention.
- •Deductive initially chose Datadog’s native SDK and agent over OpenTelemetry for faster time-to-value; after two weeks without Datadog, it reports limited practical impact from losing Datadog’s refined dashboards/workflows.