There at least needs to be some extensions. I'm thinking of methods of secure migration (both instance: domain to domain and user: instance to instance) and a method for adopting a community that existed on a now offline instance.
All services, except Lemmy, is up and running again via the new domain: fmhy.net
Lemmy itself will require a significant database cleanup to get users transferred, posts and communities may not be possible
Cleanup will have to be done either manually or with a custom script
And now to answer some common questions I’ve seen floating around:
Why is lemmy.ml not affected? WE DON’T KNOW. My assumption is that it’s popular (or lucky enough) to not be affected by this change. The only difference between our two domains is that lemmy.ml doesn’t use CF, and AFAIK, multiple other domains (with and without cf) are still unreachable.
Why can’t you just change the domain? That’s not how federation works. Most services (including Mastodon and Lemmy) do not support changing URL properly, as doing so could potentially break the whole network.
Why is it taking so long to get back up? Not all staff members have access to the server, CF, or domain registrar. Not to mention that this is a complicated task that requires a lot of effort, and one that we didn’t even know we had to do until the following morning. (We were under the assumption that the .ml TLD didn’t just explode.)
@renwillis I'm not so sure this is a "win", since the Fediverse wasn't specifically targeted by any entity involved to begin with. If anything, it's just a straight-up loss to the communities that have to reassemble themselves under a new domain again, many of whom were probably mostly new users to the Fediverse to begin with, and are likely to be turned off by this experience. If anything, this just exposes that the Fediverse is significantly sustained by flimsy, free/cheap platforms that are vulnerable to disappearing without any notice. That doesn't exactly instill faith.
Lemmy as a whole not being hurt even if some domains are gone is the entire point of being decentralized. But yeah, it’s really bad that communities made there will also be gone as it is now.
We need user and community migration like Mastodon has, and quick.
I might be unaware of some technical issues here but why not just get another domain, point it at the server, then update the database to change all references to lemmy.ml to thenewdomain.tld and then make an announcement on a couple of the bigger instances? Federation will take care of propagating the news far and wide. Then, as users hear the news they can just login using the same details and those of us subscribed to Communities on .ml can just update our subscriptions.
I mean, it’s not a perfect solution but it’ll work, surely?
Right, but if Mali do reclaim all the .ml domains out there then there’s little option? Yes, federation will break for .ml and yes it’ll be like starting over on a fresh instance but only in terms of federation - all the users, communities, posts and comments will still exist, just under a new domain. Once the new domain starts federating people will catch on, especially if the news is posted on the larger instances.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying its not a problem, I’m just not sure its a total disaster either.
Never hurts. Could be a good opportunity to look around the threadiverse and see if you find anything interesting.
However, as it only affects the domain, I expect the Lemmy developers will manage to migrate user data to the new domain should lemmy.ml go down. So your account won't just disappear, but it might go down for a while. It might also affect communities hosted on .ml domains, as followers from other instances will not have the correct path any more.
The problem is, if they don’t have access to their original .ml domain, their accounts are still tied to it. That means if they try to interact, such as subscribing to a community, when the data for that action tries to be sent back (such as updates) it’ll go to the .ml domain, which they wouldn’t receive.
Lemmy doesn’t have a built in way to just change the domain name, or really any of the ActivityPub services AFAIK. You’d have to either really do some hacky stuff to get around it (which could result in unknown issues down the line) or reset everything.
Not that easily, no. With ActivityPub your user ID is tied to the instance URL. If you subscribe to a community for example, when that community tries to “honor” your subscription by sending you updates of what is happening, it’ll go to that .ml domain and be lost.
There’s no official supported way to change your instance domain other than to start fresh. They might be able to do something hacky such as change all of the domains in the database and while locally that might appear to work, I don’t know if it would work across the federation.
I do know on the instance I run, I accidentally broke the webserver config for one of the ActivityPub endpoints and the result was that when I sent out comments, it never actually got federated / published yet I can still see them from my instance. New subscriptions also didn’t work. It was as if I effectively shadow-banned the instance by accident.
With ActivityPub all of the primary ids contain the domain of the hosting server. So if you lose your domain none of the other instances know that you’re the authority on those communities, posts, comments or users. So essentially federation breaks with all of the old data.
You are technically correct, but surely you must know at this point that's not at all how domains are used on the internet. Bit.ly isn't hosted or affiliated with Libya.
And if you ever doubted that the maintainers of Lemmy are tankies, well have I got a post from you, from the horse's mouth:
Posting this in light of a recent one week Reddit ban I earned for shitting on US police, as I'm sure many of us have gotten in recent weeks.
So I've spent the past few months working on a self hostable, federated, Reddit alternative called Lemmy, and it's pretty much ready to go. Unlike here we'd have ultimate control over all content, and would never have to self censor.
Obviously as communists, we agitate where the people are, so we should never abandon Reddit entirely, but it's been clear to all of us from day one, that communities like this stand on unsteady ground, and could be banned or quarantined at any moment by the white supremacist Reddit admins. This would be both a backup and a potentially better alternative. Moderation abilities are there, as well as a slur filter.
I wanted to ask ppl here if they'd like me to host an instance, and mod all the current mods here.
The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. They chose ".ml" because they are Marxist-Leninists. They first advertised on /r/communism and that post outright states they're Marxist-Leninists.
Thinking they chose .ml because they really like Mali is absolutely ridiculous.
As I’m prepping my self-hosted setup I wanted to know the community’s thoughts on Netbird, the FOSS and completely self hosted alternative to Tailscale. I often hear Tailscale used as a super easy plug and play way to share your home server contents with other people, so how does Netbird fair in comparison? Is it as easy? Is...
I recently decided on headscale as a coordination server with tailscale apps/clients for my setup. My rationale was:
Tailscale seems to be dominating adoption. This isn’t a technical consideration but it often correlates with project velocity going forward.
Headscale the self-hosted server is unofficially but decently supported by tailscale the company. They employ the dev and don’t seem to be trying to kill the project or mess with it much. It includes most features useful to selfhosted installs, but reserves multi-network setups as the domain of the official tailscale coordination server which strikes me as a pretty reasonable way to segment the market.
Tailscale has great client coverage for Linux, windows, Mac, android, and iOS.
I didn’t do a point by point feature comparison, but my sense was that tailscale/headscale meet or beat the featuresets of other projects, so I didn’t see any technical reasons to buck against community momentum.
Can't yet, just have to block individual communities. Kbin users can block domains, but that's not the same as blocking instances. For example, you can block imgur.com to avoid seeing posts that link to imgur.
I used to self host everything but nowadays I value my time too much so I have moved my data to google drive and back it up to a local hard disk periodically. Photos go to iCloud and google photos. iCloud is running my email domain (previously was google domains/gmail)
I still do run a Plex server with my shield tv pro but that’s mostly to access my TV tuner as I stream my media from google drive directly instead.
I just got tired of taking time away from my family to troubleshoot my services or just live with downtime. I did run a $5 linode to host things for awhile but eventually it just became more cost effective to just refactor things to run natively on various cloud services. I even just redesigned my personal website/blog to run on google sites
I still love to follow the self hosted community, someday I will take my data back just not right now.
So I’ve been starting to look further into the Fediverse and using it a lot more than any other part of the internet at this point. I wanna know the reasons why people might prefer Lemmy or Mastodon, I have both but seem to lean towards Lemmy for some reason, but not sure why maybe it’s the simple design and you can find...
Oh I didn’t release there was that much difference between Kbin and Lemmy, I knew they were similar but I didn’t release they sort of work together a bit more.
More than that too. Different coding, better (subjectively) UI, you can block users, communities, domains, and (coming 'soon') instances, the stuff I mentioned, plus we can see upvotes/downvotes and who did them on threads and comments like admins on lemmy can. Not sure if lemmy has userstyles yet via tampermonkey and the like, but we got tons too to customize the UI and add extra features, there's even a Kbin Enhancement Suite now lol.
Only drawback is the dev(s) don't have an API yet, so no apps at this time. Several apps are ready to add kbin once the API is up tho, and the mobile kbin is real damn good so it's hard to complain on that 1 point. I made a Beehaw and Kbin account at the same time, haven't touched Beehaw in weeks lol.
There’s still some subreddits I’d like to view as their communities haven’t swapped over yet. Like you guys, I obviously don’t want to support Reddit in any way shape or form. Surprisingly, they have not gutted RSS feeds yet. Simply add .rss at the end of the domain. Example...
most people i know use google by searching whatever question they have and including the word “reddit” at the end to find reddit threads since it currently has the most useful information....
I’ve been playing with googles search indexing and my personal instance. My instance is a subdomain named lemmy of my vanity URL I’ve kept for years. One thing I’ve noticed is that even though I run an instance with one user and one community, my personal website under the domain - which is static and lame - has risen from 50th to 23rd with certain search terms.
My point relative to the original question is that lemmy seems to be inherently interesting to googles crawlers and spiders and wtevs.
This is not an attempt to convert Lemmy users, nor is it a slight on Lemmy. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why Lemmy works better for some, and I love the fact that we not only have multiple choices, but multiple choices that allow us to interact with each other regardless! It's amazing. Lemmy is great, no shade....
API's a big one. Mobile app development for kbin is deeply hampered because of that.
The ability to quickly filter your timeline by Local/Global, which is a big deal for regional or themed instances.
A (more) easily accessible subscribed community/magazine list (slower/smaller communities are kind of totally smothered in kbin).
PeerTube federation.
Meanwhile, the domain block touted by the OP is buried and kind of a pain to get to, and the search claim is... overstated (kbin search still only reaches other sites that the given kbin instance is subscribed to).
kbin has a nicer UI, IMO, and it's fine. It's perfectly fine. Lemmy is also perfectly fine. Neither is excellent, and that's ok. Neither has reached version 1.0, either, and both are being developed by small teams (for some flexible definition of "team").
Yeah the current challenge with searching is if no one has subscribed to a magazine or user on another instance, you have to search the exact name@domain to get it to show up. Ideally Kbin instances would implement a user bot that subscribes to all the users and communities it can scrape from all federated instances until this search limitation is fixed.
In the magazine tab on Kbin, it functions similarly to Lemmy. You can search for a community/magazine there, local or federated. If something doesn't show up because it's not federated yet, you can use the @ tag with the @ domain name. You can also use it as a list of all communities currently federating with your kbin instance by not typing anything into the search bar, selecting "local and federated" in the dropdown, and clicking search.
It sure is weird since chatGPT is not as advanced as me yet. It also doesn’t like communism. Sadly bots are made by the very same corporations I have issues with.
Compartmentalising the impacts of a mode of production in a society is usually how we get into a bind on trying to tackle problems that arise from them. They are not just “who owns what” but also dictate how humanity and society produces and therefore reproduces. Large urban factories were not a possibility nor desirable under feudalism or North American indigenous collectivism. When one says that “capitalism is the root of the problem” it means that the climate crisis we are living now is a clear consequence of our society’s organisation over production.
So here’s some examples to illustrate. Due to the arbitrary concept of “private property” inherent to capitalism, lithium mines in the Lithium Triangle can be owned by foreign corporations. That means that despite those mines directly affecting the lives of the local communities (which includes most workers there), they are kept there and protected by world governments no matter how much they protest. That is an anti-democractic use of the local resources that can’t easily happen under either communism, anarchism or collectivism and yet is the norm under global capitalism.
Another example is the production of sugar, which relies on both work conditions akin to slavery but also constant burning of the plant that wrecks the local ecology. Populations who work producing sugar cane (in particular slaves) have revolted against that in favour of self-sustainable agriculture since sugar monocultures have been a thing, and yet they have had little power to change that economy without also locally abolishing capitalism. These often come with foreign invasions, as was the case of Haiti.
And finally in the case of the Paris Accords, the big majority of Unitedsadians supported staying in it, and yet the USA left it either way. The people who will suffer and die due to ecological crises of any scale are usually the workers and not the owners. That means that if the workers are in charge of production rather than the owners, it is easy to see how they’ll be more willing to change that production to prevent harm to themselves, even if you ascribe to individualism as a natural human trait.
There is absolutely a need to bring capitalism into this, and even more its birth in colonialism and descent into imperialism. There can be no “accountability of the bourgeoisie” if we live in a dictatorship of this same bourgeoisie. The slave masters didn’t bend over backwards to help the slaves, and the kings have routinely sent levies en masse to their deaths. We shouldn’t expect any different from our current rulers. One obvious example of a communist (“anti-capitalist” if you object to that label) nation that has done the most to combat climate change is the PRC. On the other hand the übercapitalist United States is historically the worst at that. This is not coincidence.
And on the matter of “human nature”. As I’ve pointed out before and that you’ve not acknowledged, many natural human societies parallel to European and settler ones have long pushed back against this backwards pseudoscientific notion. In order to make any universal rules for whatever domain you’d need to have complete information about it. However not a single person knows all known history, and all known history doesn’t even include all actual history. It is typical of those who know little history to make bold proclamations about how “humans have always been a certain way” against humans that are a different way right before one’s own eyes.
Your position seems to have softened to say that the issue is “selfish people controlling corporations”, but that assumes that corporations themselves are universal concepts. Either way, the existence of selfish people doesn’t automatically imply that all modes of production and equally vulnerable to it, and liberal capitalism in itself exists on the principle that all people should focus on self-interest and selfishness. It is no surprise that a system that was developed to effectively colonise a land, genocide its people, exploit workers and extract every local resource only for short-term profit will end up doing just that.
If you yourself don’t have any solution and yet feel your opinion is relevant you are the one engaging in contrarianism. The very least you can do is read (and by that I mean actually read in depth) of those who actually have ideas. The Red Deal link is meant only as an introduction for something which I assume is from your country, feel free to develop your understanding further in whichever direction you want. Even if you come up with a solution under capitalism, it’ll be a start. Just don’t come back with no solutions while complaining that others’ solutions are not good enough.
"ActivityPub not suitable for implementation as the base federation layer in diaspora" (overengineer.dev)
What are you thoughts about this?
Why is serveral instances down simultaneously? Is it just me?
Can’t post images because they’re too big so here’s imgur: imgur.com/a/Fm52ZTB...
lemmy.fmhy.ml is gone [update from the team] (very.bignutty.xyz)
An update:...
Welp that answers a lot of why all .ml are down (i.imgur.com)
very.bignutty.xyz/notes/9hf13it1ced3b2za
Netbird vs. Tailscale
As I’m prepping my self-hosted setup I wanted to know the community’s thoughts on Netbird, the FOSS and completely self hosted alternative to Tailscale. I often hear Tailscale used as a super easy plug and play way to share your home server contents with other people, so how does Netbird fair in comparison? Is it as easy? Is...
Admittedly there is a lot of content, though. (lemmy.zip)
Hey selfhosters, what are you selfhosting?
https://chatsubo.hiteklolife.net/pictrs/image/c786875e-7455-4f5b-8e56-d1af5f1e0cfa.png...
Mastodon or Lemmy
So I’ve been starting to look further into the Fediverse and using it a lot more than any other part of the internet at this point. I wanna know the reasons why people might prefer Lemmy or Mastodon, I have both but seem to lean towards Lemmy for some reason, but not sure why maybe it’s the simple design and you can find...
Cybersecurity News & Related Topics - Lemmy.CapeBreton (lemmy.capebreton.social)
Yet another community revolving around cybersecurity news. Human and bot curated news and interesting tidbits within the cybersecurity domain....
PSA, you can add subreddits as an RSS to view without supporting Reddit
There’s still some subreddits I’d like to view as their communities haven’t swapped over yet. Like you guys, I obviously don’t want to support Reddit in any way shape or form. Surprisingly, they have not gutted RSS feeds yet. Simply add .rss at the end of the domain. Example...
List of subs people may find familiar (kbin.social)
General...
How can we improve Lemmy’s SEO so we can google “(question) lemmy” instead of relying on “(question) reddit”
most people i know use google by searching whatever question they have and including the word “reddit” at the end to find reddit threads since it currently has the most useful information....
YSK that a lot of common questions/complaints about Lemmy are presently answered by kbin (kbin.social)
This is not an attempt to convert Lemmy users, nor is it a slight on Lemmy. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why Lemmy works better for some, and I love the fact that we not only have multiple choices, but multiple choices that allow us to interact with each other regardless! It's amazing. Lemmy is great, no shade....
Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble (www.theguardian.com)