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.
And besides closing registrations, many others required that you request it, then wait for approval. Of course most went with the path of least resistance - I know I did (using an alt account now because of the DDOS attacks).
Aahh please write an essay about why you'd like to join our server and why you chose your username. Who tf wants to go through a casting couch for an app you'll use while taking a dump?
Yeah, really. I get why some instances want to be selective, but it was a bit jarring to me just how many were when I was looking for a way to try Lemmy out.
It literally takes ten seconds and it's an easy way to filter out bots.
lemmy.ca had semi-closed invites and I just wrote that I was migrating away from reddit and wanted to join a local instance as a Canadian. It was like two sentences and I got approved in under an hour.
Sure, you're not wrong. But a ton of genuine users are simply checking out what this Lemmy thing is at this stage, and asking them to elaborate why they want to be here, even if in a few lines, is going to turn them away. Instances should be allowed to enforce this if they want, I just think there should be a way for users to quickly find a less restrictive instance. This is what turned me away from Lemmy in my early attempt to use it - I just wanted to check it out on whim and was told there's a manual approval.
I don't even agree that this is a good way to keep out bad bots. We already have farms where you just hire someone in a country with cheap labor to just create accounts all day.
My experience exactly.
I think it becomes a problem on larger instances that don't have the manpower to manually read and flag users, which would definitely be the place that .world is in. .ca is a much smaller instance and it's still feasible to do stuff like this by hand.
I don't think .world would benefit from implementing a check, all things considered though. The easier it is to onboard to the fediverse the better we'll all be in the long run, even if it's concentrated in a few central places.
Everyone complaining about the Beehaw registration is what got me to check it out.
It was certainly not an "essay," just pretty much a paragraph saying I'm not a bot or troll and in a few minutes I was approved. This was maybe 2 weeks after the Reddit protest, so it may have been worse initially, but my signup was painless.
I have a few accounts to see how the first few months will go with defederations go, but most instances I go to look much the same at this point. I like the feel of Beehaw best and I'd say it's my primary right now, but the defederation and signup does seem to have slowed growth.
World is my second most used, and I still check out new instances, but between those 2 the majority of my needs are covered right now. I think it's cool you can get different "flavors" of Lemmy, so everyone doesn't have to like all the instances, but most of them seen to play well together.
I just don't understand the need to rip on the ones doing things differently when that is one of the features of the Fediverse. I don't even like seeing people trash EH or LG because it's free advertising to new people they exist. I don't want to see feeds listed with their names, and the complaining is just an attraction to people who actually want that garbage.
Especially if you have no clue what it’s about and just want to check it out
Weird, I just wrote something like:
Honestly, my instance had that, and was also going through downtime growing pains from the influx of users, so I had to submit multiple times.
'I'm from Reddit trying to find a new home' and 'I like coffee' are not what I'd call an essay or a casting couch personally, but to each their own.
If you call a couple sentences "an essay"... what are you even doing writing "essays" in random comments while taking a dump?