silly judgemental post not meant to be taken too seriously (unless you agree with me in which case im dead serious)
It’s not blahaj zone, so yeah
The mods here also abuse their power to remove posts they disagree with that don’t violate any written rules.
You mean they don’t let you rules lawyer? The horror!
Lemmy.ml is right-out funny with its decisions sometimes, especially when it comes to politics. Write a couple of paragraphs of policital analysis going very much against tankie grain and use the word “muppet” once, “Deleted: Be polite”. Meanwhile, people around you are throwing slurs at each other. Wisen up and avoid that and you’ll get temporarily banned for “disinfo” for repeating something out loud that was written in the thread’s article: No, Ukraine does not lay claim to the Russian territories it officially describes as “historically Ukrainian-speaking”. The article said so, Ukraine says so, and never said anything else either.
Rules are only as good as the mods enforcing them, it’s as simple as that.
Oh no, really? That’s awful…
I feel like people need an education about the difference between spirit of the law and letter of the law.
This comment reads like this:
“I posted some truly heinous shit and a mod/admin removed it but I didn’t break any written rules therefore my right to force other people to be subjected to my desires was impinged upon😭😭😭😭.”
I run my own tiny instance so that I can feel special. And so that I can overspend on cloud infrastructure and stress out about uptime.
beautiful human being
How does federation work with hosting your own instance? Do you need to request federation with instances or is yes the default?
Was thinking of hosting my own instance just to tinker around with
Federation is open by default but I never post anything to my home instance because no one is there. If I started posting on my own instance other people could theoretically subscribe to my communities the same way I subscribe to communities on other instances but since there are only two users on my instance it’s pretty unlikely people would find it without me crossposting somewhere.
Benefits of me running my own instance are that I control my own user account and I’m not at the whims of another admin. I subscribe to content on lots of other instances and it all federates into mine which means I’ve been able to browse content when some of the big instances go down. I’ve got my own entrypoint to lemmy which feels a bit more neutral than choosing another instance to be ‘home’ for my user.
Downsides are that I have to pay for and maintain it myself which can sometimes be a serious pain. Because my instance only has two users my ‘all’ feed is basically a copy of my ‘subscribed’ feed plus a couple posts from communities that my wife subscribes to that I don’t. That can make it hard to find new content without using something like lemmyverse.net.
If you’re thinking about hosting your own instance I encourage you to give it a shot. I’d highly recommend the lemmy-ansible project on github which is both a guide and playbook for deploying the various lemmy docker containers using ansible. I’m a sysadmin by trade so running services like this is something I’m pretty familiar with but I’ve still found myself frustrated by Lemmy more than once. It’s still a young project and can be frustratingly brittle and difficult to troubleshoot. That being said it’s been a great learning experience and makes me feel like I’m doing my part to contribute to a better and more decentralized web.
Some follow up, what are the costs related?
I assume you have to pay for a domain.
I already run my own media server from home and I have a spare PC, are you just saying the electrical costs or do you pay for server hosting?
I host a lot of software internally on my home network too but I didn’t want to run Lemmy from my home so I host it in AWS which is not particularly cost-effective. The bulk of the cost is from the vps. I’m not paying on-demand pricing but it’s still more expensive than I’d like. I also pay for a static IPv4 address, object storage (for the image hosting) and like you mentioned before, the domain. It’s roughly $30 per month although that cost has a small overlap with another service I run on the same vps.
I might start hosting Lemmy locally too at some point mostly to cut costs. I’d like to isolate my more internet-facing software like Lemmy to a separate LAN isolated from the rest of my home network. I have a few things at home exposed to the internet through a reverse proxy right now but with Lemmy being very open and public by it’s nature I don’t want it mixed in with the rest of my network so I’ll probably buy a small block of IPv4 addresses from my ISP before I move it.
Great write up, thank you
Because my instance only has two users my ‘local’ feed is basically a copy of my ‘subscribed’ feed plus a couple posts from communities that my wife subscribes to that I don’t.
But if you switch to “all” instead of subscribed and sort by active or hot you see the popular posts on all of lemmy, right? And you see all the communities under /communities link?
No. Only communities that at least one local user is subscribed to are federated into an instance.
And I realize I made a mistake in the feed names. My local feed is completely empty. My ‘all’ feed is what I was intending to describe with that comment. It is just the communities that either my wife or I have subscribed to. I haven’t done this yet but I was reading about a project that admins can add to their instance that effectively creates a phantom user to subscribe to lots of content all across the fediverse. It’s intended to help bridge the gap between very small instances and the rest of the fediverse by ensuring that your ‘all’ feed actually aggregates content from other instances without requiring you to subscribe.
I’m blanking on the name and can’t find the posts I saved about it, but I’d really like to try it out to make it easier to come across new communities organically without having to hunt them down.
Ah thanks, very interesting to know.
It’s very unlikely I’m going to run my own instance, although I would like the freedom to tinker with the web client. Probably going to try to just run the UI client locally at some point.
Nothing manual required, you can federate with any other instance as long as you’re not on their ban list.
You basically use your instance’s search to search for a community on the remote instance, then your instance requests the top (5?) posts from the community on the remote instance. Once a user subscribes, all new posts going forward will be sent to your server via the federation.
At least I think that’s how it works, haha.
How does lemmy run for you? I get weird blocks of bad gateway every once in a while
It runs perfectly fine most of the time and then will occasionally lock up my entire server until I reboot.
I’ve been working on getting some better monitoring and log aggregation set up so I can troubleshoot what is actually happening but it’s a bit slow going. As of now I can’t tell if the database is getting overloaded, if the frontend is getting spammed, or what is going on really.
My instance has two users and it runs on a VPC with 2 CPUs and 4GB of RAM.
lock up my entire server until i reboot
Check the ram usage on postgres. Theres a memory leak issue thats being monitored with a proposed fix in the next version (which is upgrading to the newer version of postgres)
Thank you! I was secretly hoping someone might have a quick suggestion of something to try. I’ll see what I can find out.
Yeah no problem! My workaround solution is simply just restarting the postgres container when i notice ram usage spiking
Usually by the time I notice the server is already unreachable over SSH but I’ve been considering adding manual healthchecks to my containers. Paired with the docker-autoheal project it’s been a really low effort way for me to keep services healthy without a lot of babysitting. I’m more nervous about implimenting it for something like a stateful database though, but I suppose it’s no different than manually issuing a docker restart command.
Same here! My background is in systems architecture, so I love this stuff.
Though I run mine on my own “private cloud”. Even though it sounds like an amateur operation I’ve got the proper safety nets in place (backups, redundant power, firewalls, etc). A lot of instances are public cloud which is cool and I have nothing against that, I just wanted to do something a little different.
I have no idea how to get people to join but I hope to have some friends in here some day :D
Look at them, they come to this place when they know they are not pure. Lemmings use the instances, but they are mere trespassers. Only I, Vor, know the true power of the Fediverse. I was cut in half, destroyed, but through the dormi.zone, the shitposts called to me.
Ah yes, gotta love seeing Captain Vor invading other realities just to monologue another time before the cutting in half cycle continues as it always has and always will.
What’s wrong with world? (serious question) I know that ml has tankies and such but I’ve never heard of issues with world.
It’s got a strong neoliberal bias. In my experience, the users on .world are fairly diverse in opinions and philosophy, but the mods tend to be pro-status quo centrists – with exceptions, of course.
I recall a mod on their politics community who posted a mod-flaired comment informing us that “the United States is not a racist nation.”
Some of their policies seem questionable as well, such as blocking piracy communities or disallowing archived versions of paywalled articles. It feels like the sort of thing reddit would have done to appease advertisers.
I’ll admit I’m biased because I haven’t had the greatest experience with some specific .world mods, one in particular who is fond of calling people “morons” for criticizing Biden. To be fair, I’ve seen another more rational mod remove that particular mod’s comments, but it seems to keep happening anyway.
disallowing archived versions of paywalled articles
Really? I can’t stand paywalled articles especially on sites where sharing the article (here, on Lemmy) is the main point of it all.
I always link to an archive.ph or archive.org version because not only does it help bypass all that crap but it also preserves it for future generations.
This platform is for all of us, not just those who can afford WaPo or The New York Times subscriptions.
This is my philosophy as well.
Let’s not forget the people who were just straight up banned when they expressed their disapproval of banning the pirate communities.
You’re definitely right, a lot of the time this place feels like Reddit lite
I didn’t mention this because I was unaware it happened, but I’m not in the least bit surprised
My comment quoting the Mueller report got deleted from .world because I was spreading “mis information”.
And yet when they got hit by CSAM, it was up for hours. Now they’re trying to blame image hosting sites when it’s their own bad moderation that’s to blame. Really awful mods and admins on that instance, from what I’ve seen.
I recall a mod on their politics community who posted a mod-flaired comment informing us that “the United States is not a racist nation.”
To be fair, there is no option to comment not flaired as a mod once you become one. Which honestly seems like an oversight. I’m quite active so I’ve volunteered to mod some big communities that have asked since I’m more likely to see a report but I dislike that now it’s as though I can’t properly participate as just a normal user.
Oh I wasn’t aware of this. Thanks for explaining.
Even so, that was quite the hot take even for someone to make as a regular user.
No argument there. I do think this causes confusion though. I’ll have to see if there’s already a feature request.
Frankly, it’s just way too big, which can make performance bad, makes it a target for attacks and due to the huge user base it’s harder to upgrade. That’s why .world is still on 0.18.5 while most of lemmy is at 0.19.3.
Also, from what I’ve seen the admins can get a bit powertrippy.
It’s essentially Reddit 2.0, with all the baggage that implies.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModRemoveComment
As of writing this comment, one of the most recent reasons a mod has removed a comment was: reason: Comm rule 3: Claims that Ukraine does not have a Nazi problem
It was removed by a mod from feddit.de though. Not like that is LW’s problem unless you want admins to personally intervene with the moderation of every community on their site
Hmm looked my username up there to see what reasoning was given for why i was banned from world news after calling out russian propaganda.
Says, i broke lemmy.ml’s rule 2. But i thought i was banned from world news, which itself was hosted on lemmy.world. like either way, nothing of value was lost to me, just confused about which shithole im banned from commenting in. Is it all of lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, or just the world news sub?
E: grammar und clarity
lemmy.world requires an email and defederated from hexbear
lemmy.ml doesn’t require an email but gets you banned for “genocide apologia” when arguing to vote for biden on hexbear or arguing that liberalism and fascism are two different things.
I came to lemmy thinking tankies are a myth so I had to learn the hard way :D
sh.itjust.works my beloved 🙌🏾
Unfortunately, shit very frequently doesn’t work here
Just my cue to go out to go outside. ☺️ (sh.itjust.works server admins care)
Shit works just enough
I posted the Tiananmen square copypasta to a Lemmy.world community and got banned from the instance :^)Good riddance tbh.Edit: looks like I was only banned from technology@lemmy.ml and my client then decided to not let me post anywhere else on that instance.
Seriously? When? I want to see the modlog.
Thanks for making me check, I’m actually just banned from that one community.
That’s a relief. Just saw your edit. Which client are you using?
Boost
cuddles blahaj
🦈🦈🦈🦈
Gulps down maple syrup in support.
They’re both awful, but .ml is definitely a lot worse.
feddit.de is best ;)
so isses
I just wanted to be on the instance that gets updates the fastest :(
They should add the ability to move instances imo
Iirc being unable to do that is a problem involving ActivityPub itself, so it’s not Lemmy’s fault.
Why does it matter if it’s all federated anyway
It does and it doesn’t in some key ways. Luckily we all have the option to register somewhere that aligns with our individual personal values (or selfhosting). However communities tend to grow on the large instances since the high user base gains automatic exposure via local and all’ feeds. Meaning while we can choose who to trust our account with if the biggest communities are hosted elsewhere you’re at the mercy of large instance admins either way.
IMO the local feed needs to die for this reason. A few big instances shouldn’t be able to set the course for all of Lemmy by deciding what instances get community growth.
I like the local feed. As a smaller instance user it’s nice to see what’s going on.
Lemmy.world’s bot problem is 1000x worse. No contest if this is the choice.
Yeah but .ml is completely infested with right wing trolls pretending to be leftists which is super obnoxious
I very rarely encounter right wing trolls here. Most of the ones I meet are from .world, sh.itjust.works or more niche instances
What are some alternatives people suggest?
https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
This page lists all instances but also recommends some random ones with medium userbase and high uptimes. The idea of Lemmy is that users are spread out. Lemmy.world is massively inflated with users.
The problem with the smaller instances is that there’s less support and it’s more likely to shut down.
I like sh.itjust.works because it has the best name. Also the admins seem cool.
Also Canadian and on renewable energy.
i joined it back when shit and world were the new, small servers. I still can’t believe shit got so big and world is now the biggest
I’m quite fond of this one. Admin is easily reachable and reasonable IME.
yeah and we get to have profile pics and pictures in comments, which isn’t on instances like lemm.ee
You can have pictures in comments, just not hosted on lemm.ee. Proof:
Image uploads have always been size-limited on lemm.ee because sunaurus anticipated it becoming an issue, if you were planning on using lemm.ee as an image host you were on the wrong instance in the first place when he shut uploading down completely. What you do get with lemm.ee is everything else being snappy.
I have embedded photos though. I’ve used them from time to time. Dunno about profile pics
When we updated to 19.whatever a couple months ago the admin (founder? idk what the appropriate term is) pushed out some changes that allowed image uploads as long as they were below a certain size
I hadn’t noticed this, thanks for the info
IIRC lemm.ee disabled all image uploads following one of the waves of attacks a few months ago. It’s possible this has been since reverted as things had died down for a bit there.
I’ve seen embedded photos so sporadically that I imagine if they were gone (for a while or right now) I wouldn’t have noticed. But I know it has been a thing at some points
