I just realized that none of the comments or posts I made in the last week from my instance are getting to lemmy.world.
I went to see if I my instance was defederated. No, still showing as connected.
I then went to see if I got blocked or banned. Nope, my username is not showing up in the modlog anywhere.
Is it because my instance is small? I guess not, because I can interact with people and communities from anywhere else just fine.
At the moment, the only plausible explanation I have is that lemmy.world is overwhelmed and dropping messages from smaller instances. They do however everything in their power to keep more users coming up.
Yeah, I get that they were being attacked. I can only imagine that getting DDOS’d is not fun, and worrying about the Schmoes on the smaller instances is not a top concern.
But even in the middle of these constant outages and attacks, the lemmy.world admins are still keeping registrations open? Why? Wouldn’t it be better if they encouraged the users to move out of the instance to reduce the load? Isn’t the whole point of decentralized technologies to be, you know, decentralized?
I shouldn’t have to come here, create an account and make things even more centralized just so that I can tell people that this attitude is hurting the fediverse.
I wouldn’t be so pissed at this if it weren’t for the fact that some many communities were created here and is making this particular instance a crucial part of the fediverse, but the admins seems to be more worried about getting their user count up than the health of the overall system.
Please, admins, the more you go with this unstable federation and open registrations, the more of an incentive you are creating to centralize this further here. Help the fediverse and help yourselves. Close down registrations and focus on ensuring that everyone can access the communities that are being formed here.
We are not ‘dropping’ messages from smaller instances. @[email protected] and others did tighten up some things to fend off some attacks but that should not interfere with the federation.
If you could have at least mentioned your instance name we could ask our backend administrators to have a look and we could get back to you with an informed answer.
We will not close registrations, what we will do is show people information on how the fediverse works and give them the option to register on other instances. That will be implemented in the next couple of days.
I’m not seeing dropped messages. I can see that a comment in this thread made it through just fine. However, I am seeing since around 09:30 yesterday that get requests for comments (and maybe other activities) are being responded to with 400 “not_logged_in”. I’ve quite a few messages in error queue stacking up because of this.
Edited to clarify. The instance is running kbin.
That’s possible because those requests are being blocked to non-logged-in users.
It’s a federation message. For example I receive a federated like message, and so my instance fetches the comment (and all parent comments) if not already present in my DB. It has the correct headers to be activitypub. So it should be allowed.
Would be nice if you could mention more instances than the top 5. The way things look right now, Lemmy is becoming centralized with all communities and users on a handful of servers.
Another thing to keep in mind is that when an instance goes down you lose the content. Instances should be reliable too. So just listing any random instance and overloading them would not help either. Imagine running a private instance for yourself and some friends and getting randomly listed on the signup page here…
I don’t think small instances have a reliability problem. They actually lack users right now. And of course you wouldn’t sign every new person up to the same instance, because that is against the entire point of the technology here.
I seriously believe it would be much better for the Lemmy network to spread people out on the existing instances.
Which is why we will adjust our sign-up page. But not every small instance wants new users because that would increase operating costs which they might not be willing to cover.
No that is caused by instance owners not closing registrations when their instance is full.
It’s a lot of common sense actually in how Lemmy software is built. You can choose to upgrade your instance or you can close registrations if the load becomes too big.
It’s up to the instance owner how to deal with that, given the chance.
I think it’s more a case of long-term reliability than day-to-day reliability. Anyone can create a lemmy instance - including people who may lack the resources or long-term motivation to keep their instance on the internet for basically forever. That’s definitely going to be a much smaller risk with the more established instances - though I’m sure we’ll eventually have a lot of drama over some instance or another in the top 10 shutting down.
Yeah but if they don’t get users, they will shut down guaranteed.
If they get users, they will likely enjoy having an instance more and take care of it.
So it’s a bit like chicken and the egg here. You have to give smaller instances a chance to grow or they will shut down of course.
I don’t disagree with what you said, but I am more risk-averse than you are about it. I think it would be best in the long term to list servers with a proven dedication to the long-term existence and health of the community. This doesn’t necessarily mean the top 5, or even the top X, but it does mean excluding a server hosted on a laptop in someone’s closet with 8 users, or instances from completely unknown in the community admins that have existed for a month.
As for why I am not naming my instance: this post went to -1 as soon as it got posted. My comments are also being downvoted quite quickly. I don’t believe that I am being rude or uncivil, yet it feels like mods and admins are more worried about fighting to keep the status quo than helping the community at large, and I’d worry about retaliation.
The reason you’re being downvoted is because you experienced a problem (Posts from your instance won’t show up in this instance), came up with a pet theory for why that problem might be happening (This instance must be dropping posts from small instances because it’s overloaded from all the users), assumed it was correct (Based on what, exactly? Because it’s definitely not correct), then came here to post about it in a very confrontational, demanding, and accusatory tone, with a seeming lack of desire or ability to consider that you may be the mistaken one. Moreso, the change you’re suggesting would have dramatic and perhaps negative repercussions for both this instance and Lemmy as a whole.
AKA, “we are too big to fail”?
I’m too old for internet drama and I think that if we want the fediverse to win we need to be a lot more mindful of the collective and avoid tribal thinking. But honestly, this shit with lemmy.world is starting to get a bit weird. I mean, the lemmy devs were recommending from the beginning to not have overly large instances, yet the admins here kept ignoring this and hoarding more people. What is the endgame?
100% of this drama was self-inflicted. You could have PMed an admin describing your problem and asking if they knew what was up. They seem like pretty helpful and reasonable people to me.
Doesn’t really follow from any of what anyone has said - we’re not talking about lemmy.world failing, we’re talking about it closing registration. The one thing Lemmy needs to survive long-term is more active users. Putting up barriers to that, especially on the most popular instance, will hurt growth for the entire lemmyverse - because if there’s one thing new users implicitly don’t understand, it’s how federation works. A decent portion of people who try to sign up and fail will just give up and go back to reddit, and we’re all worse-off for it.
Not to mention that most people who do successfully join figure out how federation works pretty fast, and are more than capable of moving to another instance if they consider any of what you’ve mentioned important to them at all.
They don’t need to be in the same instance
Then we take that as an opportunity to educate them instead of tricking them out into believing that it is a good idea to put them all in the same server.
They will also go back to reddit if they join a server that is constantly having outages.
No one, not even the lemmy.world admins, are suggesting that. In this very thread they’ve mentioned imminent plans to educate new users about other instances during the sign-up process.
Nobody is being tricked here, and you need a seriously warped view of the situation to think otherwise.
You’re still making the same incorrect assumption that your original post made, that the stability issues are even tangentially related to user count instead of ongoing attacks. But again - new users figure out federation within a few days. If the outages bother them they’re smart enough to know they can try a different instance and now likely have the experience needed to know which one may be the best fit for them.
The issue is not causation, but correlation. Any entity that stands out in an otherwise distributed system are more likely to become a target. Can you agree to that?
I can agree to that, but I can not and will not agree to the implication that the solution is simply to have no large instances. Federation has a lot of strengths, but it has a lot of weaknesses as well - there are drawbacks to large instances, but there are lots of benefits too, to both the instance and Lemmy as a whole, and closing new registrations invalidates that.
If you’re too old for internet drama, why are you starting it? There’s more mature ways to go about this than petitioning to have an instance that isn’t yours shut down registration.
You also don’t seem willing to work with the admins to figure out what is really wrong.
If you have an issue, take it up with the admins privately before jumping to conclusions and starting a petition that doesn’t even do anything except cause drama.
First, I am not talking about shutting the instance down, I talking about closing down registrations - at least until their stability issues are solved.
Second, do you understand that (to an outsider) what this instance is doing is akin to environmental pollution? Of course the petition will come from someone who is “not from here”, because those are the ones that end up being affected by it!
So now youre changing your excuses. And you still didn’t address the root of all the drama you’re causing. Good job avoiding any kind of personal responsibility for all the drama and creating even more. Have you gone to lemmy.ml and demanded the same thing? What about beehaw? What about any other instance than this one? Maybe you should just defed from this instance instead of demanding a bunch of stuff that may not even help your original issue. Or any of the other issues you keep bringing up.
Again, did you even try to contact the admins prior to this? Did you ask the devs of lemmy for assistance? Did you do anything other than make up excuses in your head to hate lemmy.world?
Edit: You’re probably making all this stuff up since you don’t want to address anything.
I don’t have to, the lemmy.ml admins themselves are telling others to join other instances and are doing their part to make sure that the system works.
Do you realize that my complaint is because this is exactly what is happening in practice against my own desires? I can see (most) of the messages that come to my instance, but any message that I am write on my instance never shows up here.
My “original issue” is just a symptom of a larger problem: there is one instance in the fediverse that is growing in a dysfunctional way, like a tumor, and this is causing systemic faults elsewhere. There is a way that this instance could help mitigate this problem (close down registrations until it is better organized and/or there are other instances that can withstand the growth as well) yet the admins have refused to take this measure with (IMHO, seemingly) poor justifications.
Actually, yes, I wrote a post from my instance hoping it would reach here.
I am really not interested in doxxing myself. Would you blame me, given that I’m apparently in the weak end of a confrontation with a tiny mob?
deleted by creator
Yeah, I’ve got no dog in this fight but you do seem to be coming across as a bit of a dingus.
In my work, when someone comes to me and assumes I or my team is screwing up because they “eliminated all possibilities at hand” 90% of the time, they screwed up and didn’t realize it.
People rarely make mistakes knowingly. Quite often there’s something they didn’t know or overlooked. If I had to wager, my money would be on you overlooking some small detail.
I mean, another easy example, you’re taking downvotes as some sign the mods and admins are fighting to maintain the status quo, instead of, y’know, you might be coming off as a bit of a dick…
Yeah, at that point the onus is on the person putting forth the problem to show their work. Start listing off possibilities that you’ve eliminated. You can have thirty years of technical experience and still be completely useless by assuming that you’re just as smart as the person you’re explaining the problem to.
“I did eliminate all the possibilities I had at hand”? Naw man, anyone dropping that line has only eliminated all possibilities that they can think of, and all of that supposed thinking about “all the possibilities” is worthless if they aren’t going to offer it up as a starting point.
I mean, you named your account “you are hurting the fediverse” to come and ask them to close registrations then you ignore their questions. Seems kinda rude to me.
Dude. You’re literally naming yourself “you are hurting the fediverse”. How 'bout I go to your instance and call myself “@youareafuckingmoron” and ask you politely to change something on your instance? Would you think it just a wee tad uncivil?
Well, herein lies the problem, because the rest of us do. You’re assuming that you know better than the people who have been doing this for years, and dismissing their attempts to help as “excuses”. I really don’t know what other outcome you could have possibly foreseen with this combative attitude.
Maybe the reason is that you behave like a first-class asshole idiot? You wanted help, but evaded the reasonable question for your instance name. Several times. While making unreasonable demands. I’ve seen a lot of idiots in thirty years of being on the internet, and seriously, you are one of the bigger ones.
I mean, you are demanding something in a very unrespectful way, without considering the negative impact that could have in the grow of the fedi as a whole, and say that any reason why you could be wrong is an excuse that you need to adress. But it must be the admins who need to mantain the status quo if you get downvoted. I think you are not being very self aware.
Why is it so vital for you to keep registrations open? Can you please help me understand the logic behind it?
Instead of mentioning your instance so we can help you you seem to have other motives.
Edit: but if you want the logic. We had discussions internally as well as with other instance admins about this and the conclusion was - even from other instance admins - that closing registrations would be a bad idea. Currently a lot of people are sent to lemmy.world from reddit and 3rd party apps for example. If people land here and are not able to register they might not look into it further and give up because it is too complicated or overwhelming. So that would actually be worse for the fediverse. That is why we want to make the sign up page more informative and provide options.
Perfectly fair. People coming from Reddit specifically need to be eased into the fediverse and saying “whoops sorry we’re full / closed” isn’t great.
Ideally if we want things balanced people should be on multiple instances but I’d rather several slower, bigger instances in the meantime until the community expands.
Cheers for the work you guys do!
Sorry, that’s a really bad excuse. Lemmy allows to have custom messages/taglines on the registration page, why not just add a quick paragraph saying “registration is closed because this server is overwhelmed, but here is a list of servers that you can use”.
Make it a rotating list, change it every 2-3 days if you want.
So are you here to make us close registrations or do you want help with your problem?
I’m also here to expose bad excuses.
As for help, @[email protected] has pointed me to the right direction, and he didn’t need to know my instance to do so…
Not being able to help someone who is refusing to provide technical detail is a pretty damn good excuse in this industry.
If your goal is to expose the bad excuses of others, step one is to put in as much effort as you’re expecting from others. :P
Edit for good measure: (links fixed, forgot about direct linking comments from outside of a lemmy instance)
There’s no room for niceties here, you are either an asshole in denial or some brat who is too young to know any better. Sleep on it. Come to terms with that fact and make good on it, or don’t. You aren’t worth anyone’s energy, and I’m only bothering with this summary for everyone else’s sake. Your problem is fixed, it was never on lemmy.world’s side to begin with, and somehow you are still acting like the failure of the admins to figure out what was busted with your shit is some Sherlock gotcha moment.
I am unaffiliated with lemmy.world and my toxicity does not represent the opinions of the admins. (but they’re probably thinking it)
Well he didn’t implement IP bans on his instance I bet. The reason I asked for this information is so I could check if your IP ended up on our banlist or check if it was marked as inactive.
Is the large amount of users actually the reason for the downtime? I thought it was coordinated attacks.
It’s the attacks. The amount of users or communities is not the problem but there are people who want us to close down (registrations) for a variety of reasons.
I get the feeling that you’ve never been in charge of UX before. What you’re suggesting would be an absolutely terrible user experience. You have to realize that not everybody is as interested in new things as you or I might be, so even the smallest of hurdles will be prohibitive for most users.
So he just wants us to close and leave them in the dark, right?
This is being handled by a team that knows what they are doing. Together with someone that contributes to Lemmy.
You know what else is an even worse user experience? When people are basically forced to assimilate with the Borg instead of being able to participate from their own side of things, through no fault of their own.
Dude, you’ve been asked at least ten times now (I stopped counting when I reached ten) if you’ve addressed your technical problem with the admins here. Ten times (or, likely, many more) you’ve avoided answering that question which implies, naturally, that you have not.
You’re not interested in solving a problem. You’re interested in being “right”, even if you’re utterly, completely, and inescapably in the wrong.
Go back to your instance and flail your arms like a toddler in a tantrum over there, please. Or, you know, work with the admins to solve your problem where it actually exists instead of where the voices in your head are telling you it is.
Instead of counting, try reading. It’s not about “the technical problem”. It’s about the fact that my instance:
Let me see if I can it myself clear: If lemmy.world was 10-20% of the whole userbase, I wouldn’t have to care about them. But because they are growing so much and don’t seem to be intent of self-regulating, their growing pains is causing problems to those in the minority instances.
I don’t mind repeating it or trying to find different ways to explain it, but the point I’d like you all to understand is that lemmy.world needs to organize itself before focusing on further growth, and this is why I am asking to close the registrations.
Why do I get the feeling that your instance probably had some hateful shit on it and you’re upset that nobody wants to see it? It seems like you’re not telling the whole story here. Can you please be honest and share the details about what the hell it is you’re actually getting at?
Personal anecdote: I probably wouldn’t have joined Lemmy if it wasn’t for lemmy.world and I think I’m far from alone.
I concur. I am one of those people as well.
People hear from others that Lemmy is the place you go and when searched for you end up here. Having registrations closed doesn’t sound like a great idea when most people have no idea about the fediverse
Same, I started with Lemmy.world to begin with because I didn’t really understand the fediverse and didn’t want to go through choosing. After I understood federation more I set up my own instance. If I didn’t start with Lemmy.world I probably wouldn’t have tried Lemmy at all.
I agree with you. I chose Lemmy.World because it was listed as a general instance and the others were very specific and I was still trying to navigate what the Fediverse even was. If Lemmy.World hadn’t been an option I would probably have stuck to Squabbles or Kbin.
Apes together strong.
“If you could have at least mentioned your instance name we could ask our backend administrators to have a look and we could get back to you with an informed answer.”
Try answering their request. Stop going on about registrations, at least until the above is resolved.
I think it is already answered in this thread.
Btw the title of this thread is ‘stop registrations’ not ‘help me find out what is going on’.