VLemmy AWOL Investigation
VLemmy AWOL Investigation
What I know so far:
- vlemmy is still "up" and intermittently accessible. It is running slow as hell, PLEASE DO NOT VISIT THE INSTANCE as it will likely only slow things down more and make it inaccessible again.
- Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed. Closure date unknown
- Reddit account still exists and has been messaged
- No mentions of the instance in Element.io chats but still searching
- They have almost certainly NOT lost their domain. Who.is historical records show no ownership or nameserver changes.
I have some minor personal details I've found that I'll be deep driving on later, but it's 1AM EST. I'm heading to bed but will continue on the investigation around 9AM EST.
Update 1PM EST July 9th:
Hi all, I'm working through about 40 different potential leads right now.
Although I need some help! Specifically, I need people who have viewed !kerbalspaceprogram@vlemmy.net to check their browser cache for this image:
https://vlemmy.net/pictrs/image/928b2f95-a37c-4e94-bd70-bc014c8655d4.jpeg
You can do so using one of the following NIrsoft tools:
- Chrome: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/chrome_cache_view.html
- Safari: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/safari_cache_view.html
- Opera: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opera_cache_view.html
- IE / Firefox / Misc: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html
I'm hoping since it's a historic image linked to their internet presence that it might generate specific leads.
I'll update more as things progress.
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Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed.
If this is the case, then it looks like they abandoned it.
And people wonder why users flocked to lemmy.world with it's established, well known admin instead of "just dispersing onto smaller random instances to take advantage of the features of the Fediverse".
Look I like decentralisation as much as the next guy but most people can't or don't have the time to research the trustworthiness of their local instance and its admin team before signing up.
We don't want to put everything in one place, especially seeing as many are still waiting on Ruuds stance on Meta/Threads, bit there is something to be said for a big, reliable general purpose instance to help onboarding.
I think it’s natural that there should be a small collection of large, production-class instances that host the vast majority of users. The important point is that there are more than a few, and certainly more than one.
I also think it is important for instance admins to lay out their plan for how they intend to host and fund an instance if they intend to be production-class.
We also need some kind of account backup and migration tool so that if an instance goes down, those users can easily recover on another instance.
I made a tool that downloads and/or migrates your account settings: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
Not as good as something built into Lemmy, but it's a good stop-gap in the meantime.
Excellent!
Account migration and/or linking across instances would be huge and I think has been requested on GitHub already. It already exists Mastodon so it should be possible, but since that service is follower-centric it's a little easier there I would imagine. I'm not sure you migrate your whole post history, just your followers, I think.
More production class instances to build redundancy would be ideal, and hopefully lemm.ee and lemmy.one can continue to grow and eventually exist as equal alternatives to lemmy.world.
Agreed. It sounds to me like lemm.ee is in good hands.
But if they really abandoned it as I said, then this is a stupidity of the admin. There will always be people to take over the instance. Why would you directly abandon 3.5k users? Like I'm hosting a instance with only 5 people in, I would never abandon it without notice. It should have been established from start I guess.
All I said above are valid if admin really abandoned it BTW.
Yeah, this is the strange part for me. Pyarra was a very transparent, active admin. I’m sure all he had to do was shut it down, make one post a direct message to admins and one of the other mainstreams would’ve picked it up - hell I would’ve migrated it to my setup in NY if no one else would answer the call.
My point is - say anything, we’re all here to help.
It may be about he didn’t wanted to transfer current donations.
Update: it’s not a fact. I’m just guessing here. Not related with reality.
Well, that would be shitty.
Not gonna go there at this point though. Like I said, he was a good admin up to this point. Just scary there’s complete radio silence. Like, what the heck happened lol.
I really liked that instance. I like my .one instance. But I don’t mind re-subbing etc. I just want access to the fediverse and prefer solid, but smaller instances, with blocking as a last resort. I’ll be the first to say, I want my downvote button, I’m the type of user that likes to see and compare karma, but none of that matters to the point where all is lost if I have to setup a new user. I’m also the type of user that formats my hard drive once a year to start fresh lol.
He was literally asking for applications for additional mods. I don't think he just abandoned it.
Why on earth would you ever assume such an absurd thing? He was literally recruiting admins before vlemmy went dark and was clearly committed to keeping it running. Something happened. What you’re saying is just.. well.. pathetic.
I'm talking about possibilities. I get it. Domain could be blocked by registrar, host could be banned by hoster, IDK maybe he got DDOS.
But the thing is, what happened to the donation pages? Did everyone decided to ban this guy at the same time? Also he didn't even send a message about situation. Not on Lemmy, Matrix nor Reddit.
I shouldn't have been accused something like this tho. You are right about that. There is still a possibility that I'm pathetic :)
The donation pages going missing kind of hint at it possibly being law enforcement related imo (also with the whole defederating that one instance due to Irish laws).. but who knows indeed? Heh, I didn’t mean to be rude, but you did kind of seemingly accuse him and call his actions pathetic based on a mere assumption. Would feel bad in his shoes. Well, it’s all good, let’s hope this mystery gets resolved soon!
I guess, unfortunately, I was right 😐
there’s been an update? wow, I’ll have to catch up, thanks for the heads up!
Yeah you are right, I removed that part.
I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(
Sorry for your loss, hopefully you can rebuild them quickly
Personally, I don't think the Lemmy numbers are that big. There are some instances running bots of feeds, a lot of memes. A lot of discussion about Lemmy and other federated services. I do not really consider the volume of posts/comments about everyday topics to be that high.
Lemmy.world just got fucked too.. wtf do we even do now?
Looks like it's fixed now. Seems like the vulnerability was stemming from Lemmy code and not .world-specific so not really their fault.