While monitoring my Pi-Hole logs today, I noticed a bunch of queries for XXXXXX.bodis.com, where XXXXXX are numbers. I saw a few variations for the numbers, each one being queried several times.

Digging further, I found out these queries were caused by CNAME records on domains that look like they used to point to Lemmy/Kbin instances.

From what I understand, domain owners can register a CNAME record to XXXXXX.bodis.com and earn some money from the traffic it receives. I guess that each number variation is a domain owner ID in Bodis' database. I saw between 5 to 10 different number variations, each one being pointed to by a bunch of old Lemmy domains.

This probably means that among actors who snatch expired domains, several of them have taken a specific interest with expired domains of old Lemmy instances. Another hypothesis is that there were a lot of domains registered for hosting Lemmy during the Reddit API debacle (about 1 year ago), which started expiring recently.

Are there any other instance admins who noticed the same thing ? Is any of my two hypothesis more plausible than the other ? Should we worry about this trend ?

Anyway, I hope this at least serves as a reminder to not let our domains expire ;)

All the posts about Reddit blocking everyone except Google and Brave got me thinking: What if SearNGX was federated? I.E. when data is retrieved via a providers API, that data is then federated to all other instances.

It would spread the API load out amongst instances, removing the API bottlenecks that come from search providers.

It would allow for more anonymous search, since users could cycle between instances and get the same results.

Geographic bias would be a thing of the past.

Other than ActivityPub overhead and storage, which could be reduced by federating text-only content, I fail to see any downside.

Thoughts?

I believe lemmy.world and other instances should start defederating lemmy.ml and other “tankie” instances.

Many users have blocked these instances for extreme political content already.

Please suggest any changes.

EDIT: ok ok ok, I understand this is a stupid idea, how about a default ban list banning lemmy.ml

https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

This suddenly does not work

edit:

It looks like the problem is on lemmy.ml, not lemmy.world

https://lemmy.ml/c/politics

Does not work either.

Today, we sat down and reviewed NeoDB, a review system that lets you track books, movies, music, tv shows, games, podcasts, and more. There's some really incredible ideas beneath the surface.

Ever wanted to have an RSS feed in Lemmy? Well now you can!

rss.ponder.cat is set up to mirror any RSS feed into a community. You can subscribe to the feed like any other community and you'll get every new story as a Lemmy post.

Check it out:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Leave a comment with any RSS feed and I'll create a community for it, and then you can have RSS in your Lemmy.

Check it out!

registration is invite only at the moment, so please review the community guidelines then let me know if you'd like to join; i'll send you an invite link.

howdoyouspell.cool is an open community of writers who value privacy, autonomy, and creative writing – and, most importantly, we reject corporate interests and monetary incentives. We aim to be a no-pressure, polite community of writers from all walks of life, away from the ten-thousand-word user agreements of corporate-controlled platforms. If you consider yourself even the most amateur of writers, you’re welcome here. Too often, writers leave their work languishing in a folder somewhere – this community aims to change that by providing a safe space for expression without fear of ridicule or some big-word conglomerate stealing your words to power a fake-sentient SQL table.

example blog: https://howdoyouspell.cool/forrest/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/24353606

I'd like to introduce a new Lemmy community intended to help keep Fediverse moderators and users informed about current/trending disinformation campaigns.

I'm currently seeking to compile a list of reliable sources related to political/social/corporate disinformation campaigns. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear about them in the comments. Once I have a curated list, I'll publish it in the community sidebar for reference.

To get things started, I've already reposted a few articles from https://euvsdisinfo.eu/, which was the main inspiration for this community.

My hope is that, alongside the excellent projects developed by @[email protected] (such as fediseer, fedi-safety, and threativore), this community will play a small part in making the Fediverse a better place to visit.

From the community sidebar:

Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception. [...]

By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.

kind of like this

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17779430

A large percentage of threads I've created or participated in have been deleted. Worse is that when visiting the URL everything is completely gone.

This is much more drastic when compared with Reddit thread deletions, where the thread is there and so is the discussion. And the creator of the thread has access to their content.

The Lemmy method discourages people from participating in threads and creating high-quality content, much more so than the Reddit method.

A bunch of lively and useful discussions on Lemmy have completely disappeared. And it makes it seem like a waste of time to even contribute content here.

EDIT: I see that the "fediverse" link for posts has been removed. I posted this to lemmy.ml from a lemmy.world account and there's no way for me to get the lemmy.ml link now. And when I crosspost it it shows a lemmy.world link instead of the lemmy.ml one. I think this should be changed [back].

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/25251642

We recently crossed the first anniversary for many of us on Lemmy and the Fediverse, and we are thrilled to announce an important milestone: we have started a new registered not-for-profit organization! The organization is registered as ‘Federated Open Communications Canada’, and we will go by 'Fedecan' in our day-to-day operations.

Over the past few months, we have been working behind the scenes on the necessary paperwork, bylaws, and other administrative tasks to get the organization rolling. Thanks to the invaluable feedback from our previous check-in, we decided to take the leap and register federally, which will allow us to operate across Canada more easily. For more details, you can check out the FAQs on our new website.

Resuming Donations

With this important step completed, we are now ready to resume accepting donations. We have set up several donation options to accommodate different preferences on convenience and fees. Our first priority is to reimburse those who have been covering server and other costs, and to set up regular financial updates. We are open to adding more donation options, so please let us know if there is an option you prefer.

• Donation Page: (fedecan.ca/donate)

• Alternate Donation page without embedded elements: (fedecan.ca/donate-private)

Our current costs

• Server hosting - $150/month
• Domains registrations - $50/year
• Non profit requirements - $500 one time

Our Next Steps:

• Reimburse individuals who have covered server and operational costs and to set up more regular financial updates
• Collaboratively creating guides and learning resources about Lemmy and the Fediverse (ex. how things work, data/privacy details, and best practices for moderating or running instances, etc.) + translations
• Exploring other platforms to run. Some that are on our radar include Sublinks, Pixelfed, and Matrix
• Developing logos, colours, and other branding details based on ideas from the community

What we want to know:

• Do you have any questions, comments, or concerns? This will also help us expand our FAQs
• Which other platforms would you like us to explore?
• Do you prefer any other donation method?

We want to help build a better online experience for everyone, and that requires an organization with a strong foundation. This should be the first step in that process.

Thank you for everything so far, and we look forward to seeing you around! 🥳

The Fedecan Team

Sometimes, developing a new app, platform, or concept for the Fediverse can seem like a minefield. Here's some rules of thumb on how to maintain goodwill with the community, and ideas of how to do it.

cyberpunk.gay is now open for registrations!!!

WHO ARE WE? we’re a scrappy little fresh-faced underdog instance of sharkey (a misskey fork). we have but one humbly stated mission: to put the PUNK back into cyberpunk on the fediverse

WHO AM I? i’m vanta. trans enby girl polyam lesbian gender terrorist, the fediverse’s favorite pirate radio DJ, DIY clothing auteur, and rogue wordsmith extraordinaire. i’ve been posting on fedi heavily since 2017

THREADS? not only is this instance a fedipact instance that has threads.net blocked, but… i’m the one who made the whole pact to begin with lmao

The news this week:

• Dutch government plans to expand their #Mastodon project
• Nomadic Identity (decoupling user identity from servers) over #activitypub comes to the fediverse
• OpenVibe combines Mastodon, #nostr and now Bluesky into a single app and a single feed.

Original toot:

There are no more open issues in the #ActivityPub issue tracker!

Thanks to all, but mostly to @evan who diligently and tirelessly did much/most/all of the work!!

Onwards!

Be me.

Wanted to use the mastodon app instead of browser.

Sign up, everything smooth.

Later: Read Lemmy.

See a mastodon link.

Disagree with post, post my critique.

Want to see how my post is rendered.

Post list can't be sorted and has a weird order.

Scroll and realize that the majority is in agreement.

Post list so long, no way anyone can be expected to read up upon for context.

Feels like random thoughts dumping: Fire and Forget.

Is this how such platforms work? The author prompts something and random people interact with eachother - without a consens at the end of the post? Or am I missing something?

Interesting history and analysis of SMTP's history. How can we prevent fedi and other open protocols from suffering the same fates?

More details on PCSX2 and the updates over on this post from [email protected]

In an effort to better help prospective Fediverse developers understand Solid, the ActivityPods team has released an example app as a reference point for understanding how everything works under the hood.

Rocky start, but we're here! also making this almost an hour late due to the rocky start

What's Canvas?

Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas similar to Reddit's r/place, except it is open to (almost) the entire Fediverse!

The event is going on from July 12th 4am UTC to July 15th @ 4am UTC (72 hours)

🌎 https://canvas.fediverse.events

Main community: [email protected] Matrix: #canvas:aftermath.gg Discord (bridged): https://discord.gg/mEUqXZw8kR Microblog Announcements: https://social.fediverse.events/@canvas

It's a pain that search results on lemmy show by default ordered by some useless relevance ranking. I can't think of a single time I didn't want newest first. I couldn't find a preference to request that. It would be great if there was one.

The suggestion on c/support on lemmy.world was to make this kind of request on github, but it seems anti-FOSS to me to require a Microsoft account for a fediverse request, so I'm posting here and hoping for the best.

Thanks for any consideration!