4mo ago

What just happened to 4 million posts?

Stats from here: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

Like, has an instance gone down and if so, why hasn't there been a comparable drop in users and comments?

Edit: Thanks to @example@reddthat.com here for pointing to zerobytes.monster becoming more aggressive against bots as the likely culprit.

47 comments

It may have been lemmy.zip
It did in fact go down for about 48 hours... prompting me to make this new account on dbzer0.
Basically, the admin attempted to update to a newer lemmy version... and it failed, multiple times, and they just rolled back, restored the old version, posted an explanation and apology, and they'll be further looking into ... exactly what went wrong.
- But zip has < 50K posts.
  
  Maybe they unzipped the archive? /S
  
  i apparently cannot figure out ascii shrugs, nvm
  I don't know exactly how that post counter ... actually, technically counts posts, but:
  1:
  Zip going down could have uncounted all posts anywhere made by zip accounts.
  2:
  There could have been some kind of... propogating post count negation effect, as various other instances reacted differently to zip users posts on their instances could not pull them anymore, on different time scales.
  3:
  If a zip user had a ... top level comment, on another instance, its possible all lower level comments responding to that comment may also have poofed out of existence, in some respect.
  ...
  I may be misusing some terminology here, and this is just spitballing, but yeah.
  Almost all of my .zip account's posts/comments... are not on zip itself, and its possible that that is fairly common amongst .zip users.
- Is divide by zero becoming the most based instance? How did a single bro make best lemmy?!?
  
  I'd say dbzer0 is probably the most leftist, at least from what I've seen. I personally don't go as far as being an anarchist but can appreciate the philosophy. I probably have more in common with anarchy than democratic/plurality governance, if I'm being honest with myself.
  
  Bc he's just that chill, obviously! 😁
- Hm, could be indeed
  
  https://lemmy.zip/post/35999238
  Here's the post.
  Evidently, Demigodrick has since fixed the problems and successfully upgraded to 0.19.11
  https://lemmy.zip/post/36177918
  EDIT: Alternate explanation: The fediverse tracker has fallen victim to Trump Tariffs as well rofl.
I think this is zerobytes.monster, one of the reddit mirror instances.
the post count fits and it also matches with the user count not significantly dropping.
that instance has been using rather strict waf blocking rules from time to time that likely also affect the crawler for fediverse.observer.
- Yeah, I thought it must be a Reddit repost instance, thanks for pointing to the right one.
- Seems like the answer @flamingos@feddit.uk
- I missed your reply weeks ago, and I know upvotes are worthless, but you deserve most of mine from this thread =P
  Its been a long time since I have actually seen crowd sourcing actually work in a non exploitative way to solve a problem, be productive.
Nicole posts were banned and deleted en mass?
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
The front fell off
- In case anyone hasn't seen this bit:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
  
  LOL my sides Is this real or a bit/sketch?
  
  That’s gold!
It’s probably just some technical issue. I’m sure the post didn’t actually go anywhere.
- They just got up and left.
@blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com decided that he doesn't need his alt accounts anymore.
- Please don't compare me to a Reddit mirror instance 🥲
  
  Ah, so that's what zerobytes.monster is?
All of universal monk’s alts got deleted
- Is that the guy with a friend?
  
  No, I’m positive universal monk has no friends
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of posts were routed to dev/null and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
I remember a bot purge, but I'm not sure if that was around the same time.
Interesting drop
Aha! Checking back a week or so later, glad this was actually solved!

47 comments