[sleepyhead]

I don't get it. If the system is so broken it is returning some random http code then I don't see how returning some other random http code is better?

[dtech]

5xx indicates an error in the server, 4xx indicates a client error. So it's quite common for clients to handle them differently like retrying 5xx but not 4xx.

[sleepyhead]

Sure, but if the server is returning 418 by an error it is likely that it would return some other 4xx error instead of 5xx. 418 is irrelevant here, the server is rogue.