The short of it is:

  • vlemmy.net was one of the larger Lemmy instances (>10k users)
  • They suddenly went offline today with no warning, all DNS records gone
  • Nobody really knows why

There’s more discussion in this thread: https://feddit.nl/post/458654

From what I can tell, this has nothing to do with their domain expiring / them forgetting to pay their domain bill. WHOIS records show it had been registered for many years, and domain registration is paid for in advance:

The domain status appears to have changed. The June 10th 2023 WHOIS data showed it as:

This is what you expect for a domain that is not currently being transferred.

The status now is:

Something is clearly going on with the domain, and it’s not forgetting to pay a bill. All DNS records are gone, so this doesn’t look like an oopsie there either.

I think all of these are possibilities:

  1. Owners decided to pull the plug on it
  2. This is a bungled attempt to transfer the domain to another registrar
  3. Someone managed to break into their registrar account and is trying to transfer the domain away

I think these are unlikely:

  1. Legal/law enforcement action
  2. Accidentally deleting DNS records

It will be interesting to see how this develops. If vlemmy is truly gone, then this is a significant loss to the Fediverse, as they were the only larger Lemmy instance to have a no defederation policy.

What are your thoughts?

  • gooddaytodayhere@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    It’s disappointing and frustrating. I was just getting on top of subscriptions and Lemmy was fresh and fun. Starting over again is painful this soon

    • DAKTA_NZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      It would have to be the instance that my main account was on too.

      But if that’s the price to pay to be away from corporations and algorithms so be it.

  • DriveWorld@lemdit.comEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Sad to hear the biggest no-defed instance is gone, non-defederation is completely the spirit behind why I moved to Lemmy`

    • Flyingrock@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Unfortunately country based legality makes no defeding entirely speaking unrealistic but I too am sad it’s gone

    • delendum@lemdit.comOPMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      No, vlemmy.net is a different story:

      • All their DNS records were wiped (someone with access to a Lemmy admin account wouldn’t be able to do this).
      • Secondary accounts for things like donations etc disappeared

      I think vlemmy was either the owner very ungraciously canning it, or some extreme law enforcement action happening to them, although I can’t imagine what for.

      Hopefully we’ll find out more eventually.

      • OtakuAltair@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        or some extreme law enforcement action happening to them, although I can’t imagine what for.

        They defederated from buggit.moe just a day before shutting down because it hosted material illegal in Ireland.

        I subbed to so many communities on that… I wonder if it’s possible to recover them at this point

        • delendum@lemdit.comOPMEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Sadly unless it comes back online, there’s not much that can be done outside of those communities setting up shop elsewhere.

  • Raildrake@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for putting this together. I woke up this morning to find vlemmy.net not working anymore, and I was hoping for the best.

    It’s my first choice because of the no defederation policy, even though I had my reservations about federating with specific instances. Let’s see what happens.