Launchdarkly is likely a culprit as well. Just doing a background search reveals that the service allows dev teams to do A/B testing, enable new features without releasing a new version, and various other “dynamic” functions.

This is definitely it. I can’t believe more things aren’t broken by blocking launchdarkly

If you set it up correctly it defaults to a specific flag state if it can’t connect. I.e. always show the user the old treatment instead of the new if you can request the actual state of their enrollment.

They get blocked constantly and my old company just routed the requests through our domain so they’d stop getting blocked

I think you underestimate how shitty software can be.
When I worked at IBM and between service delivery contracts to other clients, I had to use Lotus SmartSuite.