this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Why do the instances keep going down? It makes me think that this is not a reliable social network, but the alternatives are not as good.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You're thinking about it the wrong way. Despite a major hub of lemmy being down if you have an account on another instance you can continue using the network nearly as though nothing had happened. Individual instances may have greater or lesser reliability but the social network is very robust.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If thats how Lemmy should be used it would be helpful if we could identify yourself across servers. Like email has pgp that lets you sign your emails to prove it's really you. Would be cool. 😎

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah I think the fediverse biggest limitation in general to achieving most of its stated goals is the fact that accounts are bound tightly to an instance

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

You’re thinking about it the wrong way.

I've had to go through a major change in thinking and adjust my interpretation in major ways.

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

I follow nine other instances.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Then you should appreciate that the reliability of the social network is just fine. The idea is this social network isn't dependent on one instance.

Now, granted, if a big one struggles, the network loses some communities temporarily, but the network is stable and other instances remain active.

It's just growing pains from an extreme influx almost literally overnight and generally just that this is somewhat early days. It's going to be messy, it always is early on, no matter what the social network.

Also...there's a non-zero chance it's getting hit relentlessly by DDOS.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is still alpha software, thrust into the limelight by the fall of Reddit. It is still in its infancy. Reddit has had over 18 years to get it right. So it will take some time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I didn't think of it that way.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (22 children)

Lemmy.world is super big AND being attacked constantly. Smaller instances don't have these issues and they are stable and fast. You can still subscribe to everything from Lemmy.world and your instance will remain up even when Lemmy.world is down.

I'm on lemmy.today and it's fast and stable. Come join us and you will see.

Basically use the fediverse the way it was meant to be used.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

I think there was a new version of lemmy released so the instance may be in the process of being updated.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (46 children)

I've started a 2nd account on another instance just for situations like that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How do you keep communities aligned across the accounts?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I made a tool that can help: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

It allows you to synchronize subscriptions, blocks, and profile settings between accounts.

(though FYI different versions only gracefully handle a specific API version at a time so there's some limitations right now as instances upgrade from 0.18.2 to 0.18.3 - see my comment here: https://lemmy.ml/comment/2094948 )

EDIT: Second link isn't working - must be a Lemmy bug. But you can see it as a recent post on my profile.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Wow looks cool, will have to check it out soon!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Lemmy.world server runs on a 16mhz 386dx and has 16mb of ram. It just does that sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

It temporarily goes down when the laptop gets moved to another Starbucks location.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's definitely bad if you can't use a service you'd like to use but one has to remember that this isn't run by someone with millions of dollars at their fingertips. And the reason for that is simple: This service doesn't exploit it's users.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Its on its infancy and remember this is not run by a big corporation its run by volunteers. If you dont like feel free to go back to reddit.

Edit: Hey guys so yeah this comment was too harsh against newcomers to the platform and I would like to apologize.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

While you are correct, your tone is quite dismissive and unwelcoming. If it's to be a replacement, it's reliability is relevant. On most of the update posts ive seen, users are generally appreciative of the work done.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lemmy.world isn't meant to replace Reddit. The fediverse and various implementations of the ActivityPub protocol are. Lemmy and Kbin appear to be some of the frontrunners, but lemmy.world isn't a lynchpin. Other Lemmy instances are up. And it's a bit naive to expect mostly volunteer servers to have the same uptime as a well-founded corporation. And let's remember, reddit used to go down a lot more early in its life compared to late in life (and it'd still go down then).

Plus, it's still a bit entitled to expect uptime just because they have an intent to provide what they believe is a better service than reddit. It's not only about folks ingesting content, but also those who create and moderate.

It's reliability has been pretty good all things considered.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, if it's a roll of the dice whether the platform will be accessible on any day, people will eventually go somewhere else.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've tried refreshing lemmy.world and Cloudflare blocked me:

I'm officially a bot now I guess.

Edit: But more on the topic, they have been plagued by DDoS attacks recently so my guess is it's more of the same.

Edit edit:

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