Hello there!
It has been a while since our last update, but it's about time to address the elephant in the room: downtimes. Lemmy.World has been having multiple downtimes a day for quite a while now. And we want to take the time to address some of the concerns and misconceptions that have been spread in chatrooms, memes and various comments in Lemmy communities.
So let's go over some of these misconceptions together.
"Lemmy.World is too big and that is bad for the fediverse".
While one thing is true, we are the biggest Lemmy instance, we are far from the biggest in the Fediverse. If you want actual numbers you can have a look here: https://fedidb.org/network
The entire Lemmy fediverse is still in its infancy and even though we don't like to compare ourselves to Reddit it gives you something comparable. The entire amount of Lemmy users on all instances combined is currently 444,876 which is still nothing compared to a medium sized subreddit. There are some points that can be made that it is better to spread the load of users and communities across other instances, but let us make it clear that this is not a technical problem.
And even in a decentralised system, there will always be bigger and smaller blocks within; such would be the nature of any platform looking to be shaped by its members.
"Lemmy.World should close down registrations"
Lemmy.World is being linked in a number of Reddit subreddits and in Lemmy apps. Imagine if new users land here and they have no way to sign up. We have to assume that most new users have no information on how the Fediverse works and making them read a full page of what's what would scare a lot of those people off. They probably wouldn't even take the time to read why registrations would be closed, move on and not join the Fediverse at all. What we want to do, however, is inform the users before they sign up, without closing registrations. The option is already built into Lemmy but only available on Lemmy.ml - so a ticket was created with the development team to make these available to other instance Admins. Here is the post on Lemmy Github.
Which brings us to the third point:
"Lemmy.World can not handle the load, that's why the server is down all the time"
This is simply not true. There are no financial issues to upgrade the hardware, should that be required; but that is not the solution to this problem.
The problem is that for a couple of hours every day we are under a DDOS attack. It's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole where we close one attack vector and they'll start using another one. Without going too much into detail and expose too much, there are some very 'expensive' sql queries in Lemmy - actions or features that take up seconds instead of milliseconds to execute. And by by executing them by the thousand a minute you can overload the database server.
So who is attacking us? One thing that is clear is that those responsible of these attacks know the ins and outs of Lemmy. They know which database requests are the most taxing and they are always quick to find another as soon as we close one off. That's one of the only things we know for sure about our attackers. Being the biggest instance and having defederated with a couple of instances has made us a target.
"Why do they need another sysop who works for free"
Everyone involved with LW works as a volunteer. The money that is donated goes to operational costs only - so hardware and infrastructure. And while we understand that working as a volunteer is not for everyone, nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. As a volunteer you decide how much of your free time you are willing to spend on this project, a service that is also being provided for free.
We will leave this thread pinned locally for a while and we will try to reply to genuine questions or concerns as soon as we can.
Besides the actual developers of lemmy, none has done more for the lemmiverse than the maintainers of lemmy.word. When the Reddit shitstorm started and other leading servers shut down user registration, you guys held the ship steady and didn’t flinch from the sudden flood of new users. Discovering new bottle-necks in lemmy code, helping to resolve them and deploying hot fixes. All in super fast reaction time. About “lemmy.world shouldn’t be largest server” crap - it’s good for lemmy that one server is the easy entry point to lemmy. This is where the “mainstream” communities could/should be and new users will have an easier landing. Having dedicated servers with their own communities (like start trek, piracy, etc) is great but it’s not mandatory for all communities.
Hey! Lemmy.dbzer0.com stayed open as well! :)
🫡
You definitely did!
I did this before in this thread but there are actually some others who helped us quite a bit. Lemm.ee's admin @sunaurus@lemm.ee and Lemmy contributor @phiresky@lemmy.world to name a few.
Yeah I read the original announcement. I know it was a team effort. But still, this is your sever and your responsibility.
The main issues I have with Lemmy.world is basically how culturally tied to Reddit some users are, and I just want to get away from that.
I hang out on smaller instances because there's less people trying to uphold reddit standards and BS. Stuff like keeping track of defederations, but then claiming they're all based around some drama. Stuff like that is ultimately unhealthy for the site and was a root cause of reddit becoming more and more toxic over time.
Lemmy is more or less a Reddit clone , at least in how users interact with the site/apps. The more people migrate, the more this will happen. Admittedly, that’s why I’m here but I’m not sure what you mean by upholding Reddit standards. Reddit was/is community operated and minus reddits moderation, the users here will shape the future of the site regardless of the instance in the same way. Subs get too big , and create more serious or niche ones, until those get too big.
/r/gaming and r/games come to mind as an example
Reddit has major issues of power hungry mods & admins demanding others think like they do or suffer the consequences.
I guess I’m not understanding why that wouldn’t happen here or any other instance in the future.
A rambunctious community can jump a fence. The amount of butthurt in Reddit admin teams runs deep, and there is no escape; of course, that is the whole appeal (to them).
Community mods and instance admins have similar powers, there will be similar power struggles, corruption and drama here too.
The fact that it will be easy to jump ship wont change the fact that it will be necessary to jump ship from time to time.
It's also good that these attacks are being leveled at an instance with enough technical talent, time, and money to deal with them. My understanding is that what's happening to LW could happen at ANY Lemmy instance. Assuming that's true whoever is doing this could crush smaller instances that are unable to deal with it.