It has been a while since our last update, but it's about time to address the elephant in the room: downtimes. Lemmy.World has been having multiple downtimes a day for quite a while now. And we want to take the time to address some of the concerns and misconceptions that have been spread in chatrooms, memes and various comments in Lemmy communities.
So let's go over some of these misconceptions together.
"Lemmy.World is too big and that is bad for the fediverse".
While one thing is true, we are the biggest Lemmy instance, we are far from the biggest in the Fediverse. If you want actual numbers you can have a look here: https://fedidb.org/network
The entire Lemmy fediverse is still in its infancy and even though we don't like to compare ourselves to Reddit it gives you something comparable. The entire amount of Lemmy users on all instances combined is currently 444,876 which is still nothing compared to a medium sized subreddit. There are some points that can be made that it is better to spread the load of users and communities across other instances, but let us make it clear that this is not a technical problem.
And even in a decentralised system, there will always be bigger and smaller blocks within; such would be the nature of any platform looking to be shaped by its members.
"Lemmy.World should close down registrations"
Lemmy.World is being linked in a number of Reddit subreddits and in Lemmy apps. Imagine if new users land here and they have no way to sign up. We have to assume that most new users have no information on how the Fediverse works and making them read a full page of what's what would scare a lot of those people off. They probably wouldn't even take the time to read why registrations would be closed, move on and not join the Fediverse at all. What we want to do, however, is inform the users before they sign up, without closing registrations. The option is already built into Lemmy but only available on Lemmy.ml - so a ticket was created with the development team to make these available to other instance Admins. Here is the post on Lemmy Github.
Which brings us to the third point:
"Lemmy.World can not handle the load, that's why the server is down all the time"
This is simply not true. There are no financial issues to upgrade the hardware, should that be required; but that is not the solution to this problem.
The problem is that for a couple of hours every day we are under a DDOS attack. It's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole where we close one attack vector and they'll start using another one. Without going too much into detail and expose too much, there are some very 'expensive' sql queries in Lemmy - actions or features that take up seconds instead of milliseconds to execute. And by by executing them by the thousand a minute you can overload the database server.
So who is attacking us?
One thing that is clear is that those responsible of these attacks know the ins and outs of Lemmy. They know which database requests are the most taxing and they are always quick to find another as soon as we close one off. That's one of the only things we know for sure about our attackers. Being the biggest instance and having defederated with a couple of instances has made us a target.
"Why do they need another sysop who works for free"
Everyone involved with LW works as a volunteer. The money that is donated goes to operational costs only - so hardware and infrastructure. And while we understand that working as a volunteer is not for everyone, nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. As a volunteer you decide how much of your free time you are willing to spend on this project, a service that is also being provided for free.
We will leave this thread pinned locally for a while and we will try to reply to genuine questions or concerns as soon as we can.
Have you guys contacted law enforcement? It may surprise you. A startup I worked for had the same issue and contacted the FBI. They were able to quickly (within hours) find the person doing it despite him using VPNs and other tools for OpSec.
I get you. There's good and bad in law enforcement, especially when it comes to tech and social media. On the one hand, there's pretty serious crime happening online that needs to be stopped. On the other, wild invasions of privacy. There's no easy answer at this point and governments obviously won't police themselves.
Illegal activity is actually easier to track on the Fediverse than close source websites. Easy to program bots to run through open source code looking for it.
I hate to break the illusion but cybersecurity experts already know about every Fediverse instance and it gets scanned regularly. Just like they do discord, FB, twitter, etc.
I’m left. But what the fuck is the deal with “tankies” though? All of the sudden there are revolutionary communists (with no sense of the historical irony of this label) everywhere. I hadn’t even heard the term 6 months ago, it’s then all over Reddit, and suddenly I’m seeing people talk about violent revolution elsewhere on the lemmyfedi. I know part of it is the nature of the ‘verse, but is part of it that these people are the black box anarchists of yesteryear and I’m just behind the times?
Fun fact: part of the goal of COINTELPRO is to make it so people accuse each other of being an agent provocateur
Other fun fact: another goal of it is to make it so people would accuse each other right back, completely destroying trust on all sides
Actually fun fact: this tactic is side agnostic and there are left wing plants under deep cover in right wing organizations from the fbi to the kkk specifically there to hinder their progress and damage their tactics
It's fascinating to me that there are people who deeply understand and can effectively apply techniques of sowing discord within and between groups and fanning the flames without also making themselves the obvious source of the strife. I wouldn't even know where to begin.
At the current place in time 15 people thought it was a good idea to downvote that post. That is also showing quite an obvious anti-left potential anti-liberal and US centric bias, which others for example BIPoCs would not share. Or whistleblowers.
The admins have access to that information btw. who upvotes and downvotes what. This means that closer connection to the FBI also makes it more easy for them to access the 100k+ users preferences, political leanings etc. as well as private messages. Other agencies wouldn't even need to be involved with warrants to get that data, since the servers are harboring enough international communication that you ought to act as if intelligence agencies might have access to what you write, post and how you vote.
You immediately categorizing anyone who disagrees with you as anti-left lost me immediately. People can just not agree with the points you’re making without some black/white agenda.
Sounds like you and lefty are concerned with protecting illegal activity here? Fuck that. I’m not okay with Lemmy being a hub for society’s most trash individuals.
When the world has people killing each other for the "obviously" morally abhorrent stuff like wearing the wrong clothes... I'm afraid you need to specify.
This isn’t 8chan, and I have no wish to see it emulate it. Revenge porn, CSAM, stalking and harassment: that absolutely should be kicked off and reported.
But if you can’t imagine a scenario where a left leaning, privacy focused userbase might look at willingly going to law enforcement without the above issues and balk, you need to review your history.
That's not what we were implying remotely. The FBI is known to infiltrate left leaning political organizations to fuck with them. Obviously if someones hosting violence or CP or shit like that that'd awful and they need to be arrested, but I was specifying specifically about the FBIs history with fucking up political groups and forums
Given that the goal of this instance is to serve as a reference of the Fediverse, it is expected that it will continue to grow, and in turn, attract more attention, which due to a game of numbers also involves more trolls and enemies. Thus, the fact that the instance is being DDOS'ed right now shouldn't be seen as a conjunctural problem, but rather a challenge that is here to stay and sometimes be a problem.
While I think it's a good idea for lemmy.world to do it this time, relying on a police force to routinely come to our call and do something means periods during which the instance will be out while we wait for them for work. The instance, and Lemmy in general, should have more robust defenses so that calling for external help is only required at exceptional times.
Someone creating heaps of communities just to be a mod and then getting pissy about it doesn't sound like someone with the skills to run a DDOS attack.
DDoS isn't a high skill attack by any means, they could have also hired somebody else to do it for them (there are some really big losers out there who will waste money on something like that).
You don't need motive to convict. Just the correct mental state (mens rea) and the commission of the relevant elements (actus reus). Motive helps, but it's not necessary.
But a DDOS attack would probably fall under the CFAA, possibly some other criminal statutes depending on the facts.
Yes criminal charges were brought against them. I don’t know what happened beyond that, however. It got pretty quiet once evidence was collected and the attack stopped.