this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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I had an account on lemmy.one and now the instance has been down for a day or two so I made this new account. I also heard other small instances are dead or disappeared.

So which ones do you think will actually stick around for a long time?

ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Instances with

more than one admin
clear policies and active moderation
engaged user base
regular backups
no porn

...will stand a better chance than most.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (7 children)

No porn? Why?

.ca allows porn. You actually have to click "show NSFW" during sign up if you want to see it, so it's not on by default, and it's very easy to turn on/off if you want it.

I find that the instances that ban porn also ban a lot of other stuff that isn't bad. Feels like I'm in church and everything is being censored.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Surely keeping the csam out means someone on every nsfw instance needs to look at a whooole lotta porn, including sick stuff they really really don't want to see. For no pay. I can't see a way for that to last long so either an instance bans porn or stops moderating and gets defederated.

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

Sure, but isn't that something all of the instances will have to deal with, whether they allow nsfw content or not, I bet people will try to post it. And the trolls/sabouteurs will go for the sick shit.

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

Yeah, true, although it'll be a lot worse for the mods on nsfw instances where they need to make a judgement call about what crossed which line or not. That's 10x more difficult than just deleting everything that gets reported enough times.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I'm hopeful that the well moderated nsfw instances stick around so no 4chan-esque instances have a chance to replace them and metastasize past mass defederation

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not to sound too pessimistic, but we live in a time where we see Twitter collapsing, despite being one of those "too big to fail" websites. My bet is that none will stand the test of time, the web is ephemeral (and archive.org is an underappreciated wonder of the world). I would rather say that what you really need is a backup routine.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On one hand, a Sonic hacking forum I've been a part of since before its current forum software has been running the same database since 2003, on the other hand I fully acknowledge that it's the exception and not the rule.

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

So have other forums. Maybe it’s just these newfangled social media websites that have longevity issues?

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

Because they crave more growth rather than prioritizing stability and being true to what they're purpose of existence is. These social media forum try to be everything and that is their downfall. Being focused on what you were built for and being damn good at it is the real key to a platform's long life.

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

I wish they stayed longer or given notice if they're disappearing.

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

Yes indeed, giving proper notice seems like minimal etiquette. Then again, life happens. Admin may be caught in some tragedy making maintaining their lemmy instance not exactly a priority, or they may even be dead.

There is not much you can do to just migrate your account somewhere else, that's a limitation of federation (compared to fully decentralized protocols, like Secure Scuttlebutt), but I'd wish Lemmy would implement ActivityPub's following endpoint, so we can easily build scripts to backup the communities we're in.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I guess instances run by SDF. They've been around since 1987 when they started with BBS. And since 1991 they are running the public access UNIX system. They also have Mastodon servers, Minecraft server and other stuff. These are their Lemmy instances:

lemmy.sdf.org - somewhere in US
lemmy.sdfeu.org - Falkenstein, Vogtland, Germany
lemmy.sdfjp.org - Tokyo, Japan
lemmy.sdfcn.org - Hong Kong
lemmy.sdfin.org - Mumbai, India

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

Cool! I'll sign upf or one.

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

Don't think this is a strange phenomenon or that it's permanent. I've seen Mastodon (and Pleroma and Misskey etc) instances get born and die regularly. This is because it's easy to set up an instance but it's also easy to fall in an economic problem or just give up.

Not everyone is ready to set up their own instance; it requires dedication and resources.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The fediverse really needs some kind of universal login and a way to easily migrate accounts between instances.

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

Not so much migrate as be able to use it from anywhere and have it replicated. Same with communities.

Give things a unique ID, and access it from anywhere, even if the original server goes away.

This kind of thing may not be possible with current ActivityPub protocols, but there's always room for improvement.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of the loop, what happened to Lemmy.one?

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

Seems to be down, I haven't heard any news but can no longer log in

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

Website seems to still exist, maybe they’re doing some involved equipment upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Some people are speculating a database error, because apparently 0.18.3 requires a database migration to work, here's the other post I just saw about this: https://lemdit.com/post/262746

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I think probably this is it. Db upgrades are scary as hell.

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

That makes sense, maybe there’s hope for it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The ones with the most porn

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I ain't got nothin better to do so might as well run a server forever

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I plan to keep running this instance for a long time. As long as there are weebs here on Lemmy, I will give them a home lol

Btw, I also had a lemmy.one account. It was my first Lemmy account too. Hope they get back up and running.

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

how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here?

Unfortunately there is no way to do that yet, but I remembered that there is an unofficial tool that let you transfer your subscriptions like you said

Edit: There isand open issue that might talking about it: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

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

I'll throw my tool out there as well: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

Unfortunately, you need access to the old server to download the list of communities and blocks - but that's true of all tools that do this.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (14 children)

https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate

Just used this the other day, worked like a charm (albeit a bit slow if I’m honest)

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

Seems like this would be a great feature for the myriad of Lemmy mobile apps.. nightly backups of your Lemmy account settings and a button to recreate it on a new instance

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!

The other instance has to be up. If it's permanently down, there's nothing I can do.

  1. Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/login
  2. Export your user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/settings
  3. Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/login
  4. Import your old user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/settings
  5. Click on the big button

It will search for the subscribed communities, attempt to retrieve them and attempt to subscribe. Refresh the page between tries. Do not share your exported user; it contains your email.

Leanish is very much alpha and doesn't have all features. There's tons of missing features, many of them listed in the GitHub issues.

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

I have hosted a lot of my own services for a couple of years and plan to continue hosting my instance(endlesstalk.org) indefinitely, unless something very major happens.

As others have mentioned I think multiple admins and backups(hard to verify though) are a good sign, but its only indications and you can't really be sure, if a instance will be there forever. I think there needs to be an easy way to migrate accounts and then the instances going down hopefully gives a notice, so you can move your account.

Gonna be difficult to recover accounts from instance going down without a notice I think. You could regularly take a backup of your account, but that is tedious and you will still lose some data.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think instances like lemmy.ca or lemmy.nz will be around for years

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same with aussie.zone and other country spesifc instances

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I'm running my own instance, JUST so I can be in control of my own Lemmy experience (and in control of my own archive of my Lemmy activity). I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.

Yes, my instance was down for three days last week. I had trouble with an update and didn't have time to troubleshoot it. But I wanted my Lemmy so I DID get around to it and got it working again. And yeah... I never did get email working properly so when my ONE friend who's not me joined my instance I had to command line into the database and approve him manually. But so what?

And yeah, eventually the internet ecosystem may shift again, or I might get hit by a bus or who knows?

But if you WANT to join a tiny instance that's 99.999% (bus factor) not going anywhere for a while, I'd probably let you join mine.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’d like to say lemmy.world, but a lot of communities you’d think would be quite active are actually not so.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That's the thing about the fediverse, you need to be the change you want to see. Post a lot and contribute.

I will try and post something new every day to help keep new content flowing in. Can't expect everyone else to just keep us entertained. :)

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

Gotta give it time. Lemmy in general only took off like 6 weeks ago

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

People often compare fediverse with email. But it is email as it was in 90x, not as it is now. Ant it was not that great that time, tbh.

Ideally, you need to select an instance which is already quite solid has enough users, has several admins and clear financing and which is not the most busy instance because we want decentralisation.

This is really an issue for kemmy as well as matrix - recommendations how to select a server contradict each other 🤔

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Email in the 1990s and email in 2020s is the same if you're running your own MTA.

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

As long as lemmy remains popular there will be new servers/instances popping up. I found my start on lemmy quite rocky with servers vanishing sometimes with notice and then others just vanishing without notice, Anyway I quickly adapted and began to keep a list of communities I like to frequent while this list is still small I'm sure by the time it starts to become an issue there will be tools that make it a non issue.

I've started becoming more nomad in my use of lemmy compared to somewhere like reddit where I had just one account for eight years I just open a new account with the knowledge that it's not permanent it doesn't belong to me and there will be a time when I need to move on.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm pretty happy with kbin.social. It's a nice place, with several devs actively looking at making the experience better, it just takes a while being an open source project and all

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

Mine will, planning to support for quite some time. So if you're looking for a new one, join lemmings.world!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I feel like most of the "country" oriented instances will last (and grow) as it is a more purposeful reason to exist, and this extends to instances with very clear themes as it also gives users more of a reason for people to join them.

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

now I feel an obligation to keep my instance alive as long as I physically can

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