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I mean that’s every web site all the time though. The owner/admin can always just delete it.
Like others have said, nothing is stopping them. That is why it is important to spread communities around to other reputable instances, so if something like that does happen, only the communities on that particular instance are lost.
What's stopping Reddit from just nuking it and deleting all the posts in one day?
Considering the current state of affairs, if Reddit nuked all posts they'd restore them in a day or two lol
Money and rules around said money. Reddit might not be profitable but it's still a business. They have a team of people who's job is to make sure the business continues. Spez can do a lot of stuff but he'd have a rebellion if he tried to press the off button. And he'd have a lot of debts.
"Lehman Brothers might not be profitable but it's still a business"
Also, search LLC.
Money is a trivial obstacle to overcome for many people. There's nothing stopping Elon from deleting every tweet, for example, because Twitter is no longer public and it is genuinely his property.
Short answer -- nothing.
Longer answer -- Those communities, posts and comments will still exist on the other servers, but sadly interacting with them will not federate that data to other instances anymore, since the host instance is no longer active.
So you would still be able to see the posts and their comments on other servers?
We got to see exactly what would happen a week ago when Beehaw defederated from lemmyworld. For us (on lemmyworld) it was like if that server had disappeared. Comments from beehaw stayed on the list, but new content from them (comments or posts) didnt show.
Yep, but if you reply to said post, only other users on YOUR instance will see those comments. Any other instance and it would be like you didn't reply at all.
OK thanks. I am still a bit confused at how it works tho, if they did nuke the website, where would the data from the post and comments be stored
So trying to not go into the technical details too much but when two instances federate with each other, they literally share all of the community, post and comment data with all other federated servers. But it's the job of the host do manage that passing of data.
Now once the host decides to go offline, that activity of informing all other instances of "hey here's something new about XYZ community!" no longer happens, but each instance still has the historical data from prior to them going offline. So you can still see that old data and still technically reply to it. Just that the host won't tell other instances that you did reply.
So lets say lemmy.world and then lets take beehaw.org (I know they are defederated lets assume they are not) for example. All the posts and comments which are hosted by lemmy.world on hard drives or servers, are also hosted by beehaw.org and vice versa? So the amount of data is actually doubled in size?
Yep. Add in a 3rd instance and now you have 3 copies of the database, essentially. It's just that each instance is responsible about telling the fediverse when updates occur to communities on their instance.
If the fediverse gets really big, lets say the size of reddit, it may be hard for all the different instances to store all that data on their servers
Ya, ActivityPub isn't without it's issues... but luckily it's all just text. Much of that can be compressed significantly.
I assume its only text content that is shared between servers? Not uploaded images and the like?
Correct. Images are actually hosted on a separate service along side the instance itself. So if said instance goes offline, all of the images go along with it (unless you linked to lmgur or something else instead).
There may be a need for a service that backs up a user's instance content for future migration to another instance.
What's stopping someone from scraping lemmy.world and creating another archive site?
Lethargy and technical illiteracy I guess?
Nothing. The admins giveth and the admins taketh away.
You can always host your own instance if you want. It could just be you and your friends, but then you can subscribe to anything on lemmy/kbin. Then you are in charge of your own destiny.
What’s stopping that one person from pooping? That’s the real fucking question.
For 3 whole days nonetheless!
You're not supposed to ask. You're not supposed to ask goddammit.
Opioids maybe
Nothing.
Likelihood of that actually happening: Incredibly low. Lemmy world is built with being the general server for a lot of people in mind. There's a big admin team. It's a higher likelihood for a random one who finds they can't afford to run a instance.
lemmy.world didn't even exist last month. It's funded by patreon. https://blog.mastodon.world/welcome-lemmy-world
Yep small instances are much more likely to just shutdown. It happened to me, I thought I found my main instance in dataterm.digital and then it just got deleted :(
Someone finally implementing full replication / migration / domain virtualisation, that will. atm, there are other things more pressing for the dev team, though. (Anyone here who could fund such major development?)
Btw. i think more likely than big instances being abandoned by their owners (instead of transferring to a new owner), is them being taken down by some law enforcement or legal procedure. Liability costs can make any not-for-profit endeavour vulnerable to bad big player attack.
Technically I could. But as with mastodon.world I have made a promise to ensure continuity by creating a team of sysadmins and moderators with access, and making sure it can be transferred to them might I get hit by a bus, or get bored of this.
But I hope there will be a feature to export your posts soon so you can create your own backups too.
I'll tell you what there's not, is a Mr. Moneybags investor at the top of the pyramid saying "I forbid you (admin) to act in any way that damages my future earnings." So without that guy in the picture, yeah, you could say there's nothing "stopping" the creators of an instance from deleting it. There's no one there to sue them for lost earnings because some precious monetizable content was removed. But is threat of lawsuits and bankruptcy to force content to stay up forever and ever really better than just letting individual admins of individual instances have total control? Just like any social media, what you post here doesn't "belong" to you anymore, you don't have some special right for it to stay up on the platform, it belongs to the site, and they can remove it, or the entire site, if they want to.
Not a stupid question ehh!
What's stopping you from burning your house down?
The answer is usually not that the house is completely impervious to fire, nor even that the fire department would come and put it out, but that you don't want to do that.
Burning my house down will cost me money. Shutting lemmy.world down will save the owner a lot of money. They’re not really comparable.
The reality is that a lot of lemmy hosts will rise and fall over the years, and a lot of communities will disappear with them.
Random question, but how would that work out with my account? Would I keep my username and just change my server, or need a whole new account?
Nothing is stopping me from burning my house down but what if the person who hosted this website / instance doesn't want to pay to host all the data anymore or manage it (or is that not how it works)
literally nothing.
Nothing, but all other instances would still exist. While it would suck, you can just make a quick hop to a new instance (or host your own if you’re worried about who runs things) and you’re back up and running.
Compared to if something like Reddit were to be deleted, nothing would exist.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
22 points (95.8% liked)
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