this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023

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VLemmy AWOL Investigation (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What I know so far:

vlemmy is still "up" and intermittently accessible. It is running slow as hell, PLEASE DO NOT VISIT THE INSTANCE as it will likely only slow things down more and make it inaccessible again.

Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed. Closure date unknown
Reddit account still exists and has been messaged
No mentions of the instance in Element.io chats but still searching
They have almost certainly NOT lost their domain. Who.is historical records show no ownership or nameserver changes.

I have some minor personal details I've found that I'll be deep driving on later, but it's 1AM EST. I'm heading to bed but will continue on the investigation around 9AM EST.

Update 1PM EST July 9th:

Hi all, I'm working through about 40 different potential leads right now.

Although I need some help! Specifically, I need people who have viewed [email protected] to check their browser cache for this image:

https://vlemmy.net/pictrs/image/928b2f95-a37c-4e94-bd70-bc014c8655d4.jpeg

You can do so using one of the following NIrsoft tools:

Chrome: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/chrome_cache_view.html
Safari: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/safari_cache_view.html
Opera: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opera_cache_view.html
IE / Firefox / Misc: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html

I'm hoping since it's a historic image linked to their internet presence that it might generate specific leads.

I'll update more as things progress.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Shame. Saw this instance get some decent support on Reddit, it was also one of the few prominent ones that wasn't blocked by anyone nor blocked anyone.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They recently blocked a single instance due to the other instance breaking the law in the country vlemmy is hosted. I'm hoping all of this is just a database cleanup gone awry, I would have hoped @[email protected] would have made a comment SOMEWHERE.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

His last post was about adding more admins to the instance. So it didn't seem like he was going to abandon it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess they tested the config change in production and the server went fubar.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

And it went down so catastrophically that it closed the admin donation accounts. That was a hell of a crash.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My main account was on it. I have to re find all my favourite communities now

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

Someone posted some tools above for migrating/backing up subs.

I have a kbin and a lemmy.world account. I'd like my own instance at some point, but I'll definitely be keeping these other two accounts handy.

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

I found something like that. I will definitely be diversifying more in the future

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yes, I really hope it comes back online, that's where my main account is. I hope the lack of communication ends soon anyway.

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

Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed.

If this is the case, then it looks like they abandoned it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

And people wonder why users flocked to lemmy.world with it's established, well known admin instead of "just dispersing onto smaller random instances to take advantage of the features of the Fediverse".

Look I like decentralisation as much as the next guy but most people can't or don't have the time to research the trustworthiness of their local instance and its admin team before signing up.

We don't want to put everything in one place, especially seeing as many are still waiting on Ruuds stance on Meta/Threads, bit there is something to be said for a big, reliable general purpose instance to help onboarding.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it’s natural that there should be a small collection of large, production-class instances that host the vast majority of users. The important point is that there are more than a few, and certainly more than one.

I also think it is important for instance admins to lay out their plan for how they intend to host and fund an instance if they intend to be production-class.

We also need some kind of account backup and migration tool so that if an instance goes down, those users can easily recover on another instance.

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

I made a tool that downloads and/or migrates your account settings: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

Not as good as something built into Lemmy, but it's a good stop-gap in the meantime.

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

Excellent!

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

Account migration and/or linking across instances would be huge and I think has been requested on GitHub already. It already exists Mastodon so it should be possible, but since that service is follower-centric it's a little easier there I would imagine. I'm not sure you migrate your whole post history, just your followers, I think.

More production class instances to build redundancy would be ideal, and hopefully lemm.ee and lemmy.one can continue to grow and eventually exist as equal alternatives to lemmy.world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Agreed. It sounds to me like lemm.ee is in good hands.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But if they really abandoned it as I said, then this is a stupidity of the admin. There will always be people to take over the instance. Why would you directly abandon 3.5k users? Like I'm hosting a instance with only 5 people in, I would never abandon it without notice. It should have been established from start I guess.

All I said above are valid if admin really abandoned it BTW.

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

Yeah, this is the strange part for me. Pyarra was a very transparent, active admin. I’m sure all he had to do was shut it down, make one post a direct message to admins and one of the other mainstreams would’ve picked it up - hell I would’ve migrated it to my setup in NY if no one else would answer the call.

My point is - say anything, we’re all here to help.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

It may be about he didn’t wanted to transfer current donations.

Update: it’s not a fact. I’m just guessing here. Not related with reality.

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

Well, that would be shitty.

Not gonna go there at this point though. Like I said, he was a good admin up to this point. Just scary there’s complete radio silence. Like, what the heck happened lol.

I really liked that instance. I like my .one instance. But I don’t mind re-subbing etc. I just want access to the fediverse and prefer solid, but smaller instances, with blocking as a last resort. I’ll be the first to say, I want my downvote button, I’m the type of user that likes to see and compare karma, but none of that matters to the point where all is lost if I have to setup a new user. I’m also the type of user that formats my hard drive once a year to start fresh lol.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

He was literally asking for applications for additional mods. I don't think he just abandoned it.

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

Why on earth would you ever assume such an absurd thing? He was literally recruiting admins before vlemmy went dark and was clearly committed to keeping it running. Something happened. What you’re saying is just.. well.. pathetic.

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

I'm talking about possibilities. I get it. Domain could be blocked by registrar, host could be banned by hoster, IDK maybe he got DDOS.

But the thing is, what happened to the donation pages? Did everyone decided to ban this guy at the same time? Also he didn't even send a message about situation. Not on Lemmy, Matrix nor Reddit.

I shouldn't have been accused something like this tho. You are right about that. There is still a possibility that I'm pathetic :)

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

The donation pages going missing kind of hint at it possibly being law enforcement related imo (also with the whole defederating that one instance due to Irish laws).. but who knows indeed? Heh, I didn’t mean to be rude, but you did kind of seemingly accuse him and call his actions pathetic based on a mere assumption. Would feel bad in his shoes. Well, it’s all good, let’s hope this mystery gets resolved soon!

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

I guess, unfortunately, I was right 😐

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

there’s been an update? wow, I’ll have to catch up, thanks for the heads up!

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

Yeah you are right, I removed that part.

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

I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(

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

Sorry for your loss, hopefully you can rebuild them quickly

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

Personally, I don't think the Lemmy numbers are that big. There are some instances running bots of feeds, a lot of memes. A lot of discussion about Lemmy and other federated services. I do not really consider the volume of posts/comments about everyday topics to be that high.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

My primary account is on there. Thanks for looking into it.

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

Anyone have the backstory here?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

https://feddit.nl/post/458654

vlemmy.net stopped working (or stopped being useable) yesterday.

The domain was showing as parked in a dynamic dns server.

Nobody knows what happened so far.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there an easy way to ”backup” your subscriptions so that migrating to another instance is less cumbersome?

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

In addition to the other suggestions, I have just published lemmy2opml which allows you to export your subscribed communities to an OPML file. You can then import that file to a different account.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There is actually! ~~Going to look for the link and edit when I find it but~~ there’s a simple pc tool that lets you download and upload all your subs and blocks in two clicks

There’s also a python script for it

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

Is there a way to do so on a phone?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

My leading hypotheses:

Admin got a request from the police or lawyers, and freaked out
Admin had a mental breakdown
Admin's parents found out about the server being run from their home's internet, and told admin to stop it.

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

Hopefully, something will come up soon about what happened to it. It's a definite shame that it dropped so quickly, it's been a really good instance up to this point.

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

While I understand everyone's belief that the admin, @[email protected], abandoned the instance, I do not believe so for a few key reasons:

They asked for additional admins no less than 24h before the first connection issues. This indicates their willingness to put in work for the instance and expand.
They raised a legal issue with having to defederate from an instance just a few hours prior to the connection issues. The instance in question was hosting content that can be seen as child pornography in Irish law - which is where vlemm.net is hosted. @[email protected] was incredibly transparent with this issue. This level of transparency makes me doubt they would suddenly disappear purposefully. Speculatively I can guess that the legal issues may be connected to the going-dark.
The site is still occasionally loading, but extremely slow and not correctly. In addition to this, it shows a logged in user (PrinceHabib72) - which is not me. There was a known security vulnerability in lemmy (see here ). The vulnerability includes cookie / token immitation and stealing. Having a logged in user (that is not me) when loading the site thus rings alarm bells to me. Apart from the logged in user, the inability to properly load the site most times but sometimes parts of it load (and the remaining requests time out, like getting icons and content etc.), screams denial-of-service to me.

Just like the other people in this thread, these are speculations. However, I have a weird feeling in screaming 'abandon' here. Given everything observed, that does not feel right to me.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for checking it out

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

Have you found anything new since the last update?

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

I've ruled out a good amount of leads but I have not had contact with the admin yet :(

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

Out of the loop here

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

https://feddit.nl/post/458654

vlemmy.net stopped working (or stopped being useable) yesterday.

The domain was showing as parked in a dynamic dns server.

Nobody knows what happened so far.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Many thanks!

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

Is there a way to migrate my communities?

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

Is there a way to migrate my communities?

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