[cloakandswagger]

The Lambda-SQS poller will slow down in response to the lambda's error rate for this exact reason.

Note that this can cause issues: say you have a time sensitive application that receives a batch of "bad" messages which cause failed lambda invocations. The poller will slow down and the throughput will drop drastically, even though your intention might be for the lambda to continue processing at the same rate and power through the bad messages.

This behavior can be disabled with a support request.