system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why there doesn't seem to be any defense against a DDOS.

I've seen some large companies websites taken down from DDOS, which I've heard is "so simple a child could do it", "The simplest  web attack possible". Why does it seem there is no defense against it to quickly thwart or turn the tables?
gpt
So a DDoS would be like me having 1,000 people an hour call your cell phone, constantly, so that you couldn't make any calls and (more importantly) people trying to call you couldn't get through. Though in the computer world it's more like 100,000 or 1,000,000 an hour. The point of the attack is to prevent legitimate web traffic from reaching a site. In that sense, it's fairly easy to do. All you need is enough people to ping a site, either voluntarily or via a botnet (a network of infected computers that will do this on your command). The solution for your phone would be to have another phone number that people knew to call in the event your main number was messed up, but that kind of coordination can be costly and confusing to people. Some websites and companies can reduce the impact of a DDoS by rerouting traffic, but it's not something that's easy to accomplish, especially for commerce based sites.