Welcome to the January 2025 Lemmy.zip Server Update!

As the first one of 2025, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and I hope you all had a lovely time with your loved ones.

There are some quite important changes to include in this update, so please do take a couple of minutes to read it.

Server Update

Lemmy.zip was updated to Lemmy 0.19.8 - Changelog - which was a quick and easy update.

At the same time I switched image proxying on which means, in the words of the lemmy devs:

This prevents deanonymization attacks where an attacker uploads an image to his own server, embeds it in a Lemmy post and watches the IPs which load the image.

You can see exactly what this prevents by clicking here.

This has caused some images to be broken from loading from external websites, whereby you will get the broken image fallback instead of the actual image. Lemmy allows me to bypass proxying images where this happens, so if you do regularly see broken images please let me know which posts and I will bypass it so the images work again.

Lemmy.zip is also now 18+ only. This has applied from the 1st January for all new users, and this will go into effect for all current users from 1st Feb 2025. If you think this will affect you, please let me know and I can support with that. This is in relation to the UK’s Online Safety Act, and the guidance being published by the UK regulator, OFCOM. Unfortuantely the full guidance around what I need to do as a UK citizen hasn’t yet been published, but if the worst happens and we’re forced to implement Age Verification checks (which is my current sticking point - I simply won’t do it) then I have some contingency plans to legally move Lemmy.zip out of the UK. It all seems a bit extreme for a small community website, but that’s the insanity of the UK for you.

So ultimately nothing will change for you all, I just have to be strict about the 18+ rule, as Lemmy doesn’t allow me any granular controls over how NSFW content works on the instance, and I don’t want to turn it off (especially for the communities that use it for spoilers).

This is also a material change to the terms and conditions of the site, and this is notice of those changes (which will also Pm’d to every user, if you haven’t already read it!) which come in to place on 1st Feb 2025. You can read the updated T&cs here: Terms & Conditions.

ZippyBot continues to receive updates, and I am working on adding tools for admins to better manage user moderation (we’d always rather issue warnings than bans, but we need the tools to do this fairly). I am also working on making the bot smarter about recovery on the odd occasion it crashes.

Finally, there is a user survey coming soon! We haven’t done one of these for a while, but the last one helped us to shape some of the stuff we were working on, and many policies today are based on the feedback we received. I’ll post a little bit more when this is ready, but please do keep an eye out!

ADMIN RECRUITMENT!

We have recently appointed a new admin to Lemmy.zip - Druid. Please join me in welcoming him into the role! He also has the distinct honor of being our longest serving user!

On the topic, we’re also recruiting another admin. If you’re interested, please head over to this application form and answer the questions.

There are some requirements. You must have a Lemmy.zip account that is over 1 month old, and it must be regularly used. You don’t need to be a moderator but the experience would help. Also optional but very helpful would be any sort of SysAdmin experience (i.e. linux, ssh, docker) and python experience. Please don’t let that stop you though, we’re looking for someone who fits the ethos of what we want the site to be above all else.

I’ll leave the applications open for a week - until Sunday 12th January.

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don’t be a lurker! :)

Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you’re enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We’ve also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I’ve added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can’t express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!