It's only slightly better than "my mom claims". My mom would ask if I had the internet at my house. Yup. all of it. in a rack in my bedroom closet. She'd also report the "internet is down" when a single website was having issues. To me, that is down detector carrying on the legacy of moms everywhere.
and something is usually happening. the issue is that a lot of end users (so the people that down detector is pulling from) don't understand the systems well enough to point to where that something is and will often misattribute it, which is what both parent and grandparent is claiming.
