Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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Lemmy.ml and beehaw.org getting hammered with traffic because of spez ama (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Both were down for me before, they seem to be up right now but just made this account on Lemmy.blahaj.zone (Henry is the name of my actual blahaj lol). It's probably because of the traffic influx from reddit refugees from the absolutely disastrous spez ama (where he doubles down on everything and doesn't apologize at all). Allegedly they're trying to suppress Lemmy mentions but I guess it's not working well enough lol

A good problem to have although long term we're going to have to figure out how to deal with these spikes in traffic.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't noticed at all, because I follow communities on lemmy.ml and beehaw.org from my own instance. I had this experience when Mastodon.social kept going down during major Twitter exodus phases. Federation is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you tell me more about the pros and cons of running your own instance? Why did you choose to do that? I'm new at this so I'm very intrigued.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Of course. Here's a quick one:

Pros:

You don't depend on anyone else's funds or time
Always available and snappy no matter how busy some parts of the Fediverse get
You choose who to federate with. Want to talk to both puppy-lovers and puppy-haters? No problem.
It's a social media account you really, in every sense of the word, own. Nobody can take it away from you. The lemmy.ml admins could accept the billions* they're surely being offered right now for their instance, but my account is still mine.

Cons:

Hosting costs some money, knowledge, and time.
Unless you subscribe to specific communities (or people, in the cast of Mastodon) those posts will never reach your server. So you don't really have a "Federated" timeline

*I'm joking about the billions. Probably.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for that response. Is there an easy way to start an instance?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What's your level of technical knowledge? If you already know the terms "VPS" and "Docker", then yeah, it's fairly easy IMO (I have some notes here). If you have no idea what you just read, it could be a little tough. There are some rough edges to work out still, but if you join us on Matrix people are fairly helpful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I honestly don't know those terms but I'm very tech savvy. I'm running my own home cloud. I play around with Linux. And I just love tinkering until I fully understand how something works. I don't see the learning curve to be a problem. I'd enjoy the experience which is why I'm seeking it out really. I think I'd really enjoy playing that role in this community.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you have a spare machine lying around, install proxmox.
It's a great way to learn VMs and networking.
Then you can create a VM, snapshot it (as a restore point), mess around with docker or podman, break stuff, then restore the VM to try again.
All this runs on your local network, so when it comes to setting up a Lemmy instance, you are going to want access to it from the internet. Things like Cloudflare and Tailscale can make this very easy.

It's a wonderful rabbit hole of learning!
I would recommend /r/homelab or /r/selfhosted but I think those communities are still finding a home on the fediverse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

+1 to Proxmox, it has been my lifeline when it comes to playing around with self hosting stuff! I'd heard about hypervisors before but was still under the impression that virtualizing had a ton of overhead (there is still some overhead, but not by much).

Additionally, Proxmox Backup Server is a really nice pairing as well!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unless you subscribe to specific communities (or people, in the cast of Mastodon) those posts will never reach your server. So you don’t really have a “Federated” timeline

This seems like a pretty serious flaw in the federation protocol. Hope it's fixed at some point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The "subscribe & push" model is practically fundamental to ActivityPub. There's pros and cons to this design, but ultimately I think it's confusing and cumbersome for users..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

While true, this only affects people who are hosting and running their own instance. And if they're doing that, it isn't that big of a deal.

Users that might struggle with the concepts are probably joining larger instances that are already federated, so the problem is solved as soon as they find the "All" button.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it in the ballpark of "easy if you're a techie and experienced with Linux" to use an old PC as a server instead of paying to host it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The short answer: yes.

The long answer: Yes, but...

If this is your home network, you're providing attackers with an entry point into your network. You're also giving yourself an avenue to get DDOS'd etc. You'd have to open ports and get that set up - or deal with a reverse proxy or whatever.

But generally it's as easy as running a Docker container and pointing a domain at your IP.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And, of course, ensuring that your IP provider doesn't run behind a Client-Grade Network Address Translator (CG-NAT). Otherwise, you're better off renting a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or if you're particularly strapped of money and have a lot of patience, you can bridge it with your home server using a Virtual Private Network (VPS) and a good amount of scripting to remap the ports accordingly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Might be my vacation project then. But I probably won't use it seriously if I'm not sure I can keep it decently secured.