I had an account on lemmy.one and now the instance has been down for a day or two so I made this new account. I also heard other small instances are dead or disappeared.
So which ones do you think will actually stick around for a long time?
ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!
Instances with
more than one admin
clear policies and active moderation
engaged user base
regular backups
no porn…will stand a better chance than most.
I’m hopeful that the well moderated nsfw instances stick around so no 4chan-esque instances have a chance to replace them and metastasize past mass defederation
No porn? Why?
.ca allows porn. You actually have to click “show NSFW” during sign up if you want to see it, so it’s not on by default, and it’s very easy to turn on/off if you want it.
I find that the instances that ban porn also ban a lot of other stuff that isn’t bad. Feels like I’m in church and everything is being censored.
Surely keeping the csam out means someone on every nsfw instance needs to look at a whooole lotta porn, including sick stuff they really really don’t want to see. For no pay. I can’t see a way for that to last long so either an instance bans porn or stops moderating and gets defederated.
I could see a better chance with one of the experienced porn Admins from Reddit, they have years of experience and are probably used to even worse shit!
Sure, but isn’t that something all of the instances will have to deal with, whether they allow nsfw content or not, I bet people will try to post it. And the trolls/sabouteurs will go for the sick shit.
Yeah, true, although it’ll be a lot worse for the mods on nsfw instances where they need to make a judgement call about what crossed which line or not. That’s 10x more difficult than just deleting everything that gets reported enough times.
Depending on your hosting provider TOS you may not be able to host porn without risking your instance.
NSFW and Porn are not the same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_safe_for_work
The marked content may contain graphic violence, pornography, profanity, nudity, slurs or other potentially disturbing subject matter.
Square rectangle sort of thing, no?
All porn is NSFW. But not all NSFW stuff is porn.
Yeah, it’s a terrible term that needs to be done away with.
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Same here lol. I’m keen to keep this instance going even if I end up being the only user. I’ve toyed with the idea of what I might do if I did end up with a bunch of users (would i cap at a certain amount of usrrs, how would I put the feelers out to get mods, etc).
The “niche” I’m going for is no reliance on public cloud. I run everything on my own hardware, back it up myself, scale it as needed and maintain it myself. That won’t appeal to everyone, but I’m not trying to be the biggest instance.
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Not to sound too pessimistic, but we live in a time where we see Twitter collapsing, despite being one of those “too big to fail” websites. My bet is that none will stand the test of time, the web is ephemeral (and archive.org is an underappreciated wonder of the world). I would rather say that what you really need is a backup routine.
On one hand, a Sonic hacking forum I’ve been a part of since before its current forum software has been running the same database since 2003, on the other hand I fully acknowledge that it’s the exception and not the rule.
So have other forums. Maybe it’s just these newfangled social media websites that have longevity issues?
Because they crave more growth rather than prioritizing stability and being true to what they’re purpose of existence is. These social media forum try to be everything and that is their downfall. Being focused on what you were built for and being damn good at it is the real key to a platform’s long life.
Doomworld still going strong since the 90s as well.
I wish they stayed longer or given notice if they’re disappearing.
Yes indeed, giving proper notice seems like minimal etiquette. Then again, life happens. Admin may be caught in some tragedy making maintaining their lemmy instance not exactly a priority, or they may even be dead.
There is not much you can do to just migrate your account somewhere else, that’s a limitation of federation (compared to fully decentralized protocols, like Secure Scuttlebutt), but I’d wish Lemmy would implement ActivityPub’s following endpoint, so we can easily build scripts to backup the communities we’re in.
I guess instances run by SDF. They’ve been around since 1987 when they started with BBS. And since 1991 they are running the public access UNIX system. They also have Mastodon servers, Minecraft server and other stuff. These are their Lemmy instances:
lemmy.sdf.org - somewhere in US
lemmy.sdfeu.org - Falkenstein, Vogtland, Germany
lemmy.sdfjp.org - Tokyo, Japan
lemmy.sdfcn.org - Hong Kong
lemmy.sdfin.org - Mumbai, IndiaCool! I’ll sign upf or one.
Yeah. Good list.
how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here?
Unfortunately there is no way to do that yet, but I remembered that there is an unofficial tool that let you transfer your subscriptions like you said
I’ll throw my tool out there as well: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
Unfortunately, you need access to the old server to download the list of communities and blocks - but that’s true of all tools that do this.
https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate
Just used this the other day, worked like a charm (albeit a bit slow if I’m honest)
I found another tool: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim, from: https://lemmy.world/comment/857727, p.s. I haven’t tried it
Used this one, works very well.
How do I install this on Windows? I don’t know how to code. 😭
use https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim , easier
OMG this is the one I saw. THANK YOU!
Look into the WSL
If you don’t have an experience using the command line then it’s a tad more involved then I can explain in-depth on mobile. Best I can do is give a brief outline.
To start with, wescode/lemmy_migrate is a python 3 script. If you are running windows install WSL (Ubuntu), once you have a command line I am familiar with you will want to download the repository from GitHub to a directory.
You will then need to create a config file called
migrate.confUse the sample provided in the repo under configuration. Edit it to use your information. You can use nano as a text editor.Then it looks like the command would be something like:
python lemmy_migrate -c ./migrate.confSorry if that is crap help, but I’m not near my computer right now, and don’t often use Windows anymore to boot.
PS:
WSL is a program from Microsoft that gives you a mostly functional Linux command line within Windows. None of this is as complicated as it sounds, I’m using more words then strictly necessary to explain things somewhat at beginner level. The most time consuming part of this would be first installing WSL and then installing Ubuntu onto WSL. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do so.
Hopefully someone more familiar with Windows can tell you how to do the same thing from either the DOS prompt or from Windows PowerShell. It’s doable, (almost anything is) I’m just not familiar enough with either to walk you through it.
It’s confusing for me 😅 but I will try.
Here’s a thread where I helped someone else with the process on windows: https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/1420339
The steps are:
- Set up the python code
- Go to https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate/releases/tag/v1.1.0
- Download the zip file
- Extract the zip file, to make a folder somewhere on your system called lemmy_migrate-1.1.0. Remember where this folder is
- Inside the folder you will find a file called
config.ini. Use notepad to edit the file to have your server URL and login credentials.
- Set up the python interpreter
- Install python from https://www.python.org/downloads/
- Open powershell
- install the python package requests by pasting the following command into powershell:
py -m pip install --user requests
- Use the python interpreter to interpret your python
- first make sure powershell is looking at the correct folder. One way to do this is to open the lemmy_migrate-1.1.0 folder in windows explorer. right click on the box that shows you the path, and copy the text. then write
cd <pasted path>in powershell. This path will very likely be something likeC:\\Users\Wu9fee\Downloads\lemmy_migrate-1.1.0. If you don’t want to copy and paste the path from explorer, you can just docd Downloadsthencd lemmy_migrate-1.1.0 - Finaly, you can run the python command with
py lemmy-migrate.py -c config.ini
- first make sure powershell is looking at the correct folder. One way to do this is to open the lemmy_migrate-1.1.0 folder in windows explorer. right click on the box that shows you the path, and copy the text. then write
Let me know if you run into any problems.
If you can pull this off, you can officially say you know how to code.
Thanks for the tutorial! I might try but it looks hard. 🤔
Not too hard. Just alot of unfamiliar vocabulary. 😄 If you run into any questions with either of our walk throughs, (my linux one or @[email protected] 's Powershell one), feel free to DM me. Don’t mind helping folks starting their exploration of computers. We all started somewhere.
It’s not too bad, it seems more difficult because I added all the steps. Changing the folder PowerShell is looking at is easy to do, but hard to explain.
- Set up the python code
Seems like this would be a great feature for the myriad of Lemmy mobile apps… nightly backups of your Lemmy account settings and a button to recreate it on a new instance
Don’t think this is a strange phenomenon or that it’s permanent. I’ve seen Mastodon (and Pleroma and Misskey etc) instances get born and die regularly. This is because it’s easy to set up an instance but it’s also easy to fall in an economic problem or just give up.
Not everyone is ready to set up their own instance; it requires dedication and resources.
The fediverse really needs some kind of universal login and a way to easily migrate accounts between instances.
Not so much migrate as be able to use it from anywhere and have it replicated. Same with communities.
Give things a unique ID, and access it from anywhere, even if the original server goes away.
This kind of thing may not be possible with current ActivityPub protocols, but there’s always room for improvement.
The universal login is a very old suggestion but it’srealluy hard to pull off because that would have to be build into the core of the protocol. About the migration, that’s a Lemmy issue, not a general Fediverse one
Not really; login mechanisms are a separate thing. OAuth already exists. You only need Fediverse software to accept OAuth from anywhere and to provide it to others.
The migration part is IMO harder, but not necessarily by much. I don’t know of any fediverse software that’d allow it though.
What I mean with “universal login” is one account for multiple Fediverse services, I guess that wasn’t clear from my post. Yea, proper migration is hard and questionable if we should even allow it (could cause all kinds of issues, espwcially regarding account security) but Mastodon allows you to move your followers and add a redirect which is the most important part of the account and Lemmy should probably try to do something similar with ranks and communities.
Out of the loop, what happened to Lemmy.one?
Seems to be down, I haven’t heard any news but can no longer log in
Website seems to still exist, maybe they’re doing some involved equipment upgrade.
Some people are speculating a database error, because apparently 0.18.3 requires a database migration to work, here’s the other post I just saw about this: https://lemdit.com/post/262746
I think probably this is it. Db upgrades are scary as hell.
I ain’t got nothin better to do so might as well run a server forever
Lemmy.world
Mine will, planning to support for quite some time. So if you’re looking for a new one, join lemmings.world!
Nice!
ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!
The other instance has to be up. If it’s permanently down, there’s nothing I can do.
- Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/login
- Export your user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/settings
- Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/login
- Import your old user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/settings
- Click on the big button
It will search for the subscribed communities, attempt to retrieve them and attempt to subscribe. Refresh the page between tries. Do not share your exported user; it contains your email.
Leanish is very much alpha and doesn’t have all features. There’s tons of missing features, many of them listed in the GitHub issues.
I’m pretty happy with kbin.social. It’s a nice place, with several devs actively looking at making the experience better, it just takes a while being an open source project and all
People often compare fediverse with email. But it is email as it was in 90x, not as it is now. Ant it was not that great that time, tbh.
Ideally, you need to select an instance which is already quite solid has enough users, has several admins and clear financing and which is not the most busy instance because we want decentralisation.
This is really an issue for kemmy as well as matrix - recommendations how to select a server contradict each other 🤔
Email in the 1990s and email in 2020s is the same if you’re running your own MTA.
Sure. If you do everything yourself, like implement antispam, backup, maintenance, high availability, etc - then it is mostly the same.
HA for personal MTA is way overkill, just run a second instance with higher MX record value. Antispam is a given, backups are snapshots, maintenance is just system updates. Of course, you could just run an appliance which does it all for you. I’d say it’s way easier than in 1990s.
my original comment was about using e-mail service provided by others. Hosting own e-mail server as well as a lemmy instance is … not for “normal” people (as well as serving their cars or build a house etc)
Same with aussie.zone and other country spesifc instances
Also aussie.zone, checking in
Aussie.zoners, mount up.
Aussie.zone here, mount up
I have hosted a lot of my own services for a couple of years and plan to continue hosting my instance(endlesstalk.org) indefinitely, unless something very major happens.
As others have mentioned I think multiple admins and backups(hard to verify though) are a good sign, but its only indications and you can’t really be sure, if a instance will be there forever. I think there needs to be an easy way to migrate accounts and then the instances going down hopefully gives a notice, so you can move your account.
Gonna be difficult to recover accounts from instance going down without a notice I think. You could regularly take a backup of your account, but that is tedious and you will still lose some data.
Can you upload your comment history to a new instance? Does that question even make sense? I’m not sure what backing up means, I guess. Just an archive?
There are tools that can backup and migrate communities, blocks and settings like lasim for a user. So you can migrate between instances.
As far as I know, there aren’t any tools that can migrate comment history and I think anything that could do that, would need to be backed into lemmy itself(Which it isn’t currently).
As long as lemmy remains popular there will be new servers/instances popping up. I found my start on lemmy quite rocky with servers vanishing sometimes with notice and then others just vanishing without notice, Anyway I quickly adapted and began to keep a list of communities I like to frequent while this list is still small I’m sure by the time it starts to become an issue there will be tools that make it a non issue.
I’ve started becoming more nomad in my use of lemmy compared to somewhere like reddit where I had just one account for eight years I just open a new account with the knowledge that it’s not permanent it doesn’t belong to me and there will be a time when I need to move on.
