For hours today, yesterday, and intermittently since I’ve been on here (a month or so) lemmy stops loading using jerboa, liftoff, and a web browser.

The site isn’t listed on any down detector I know of, and each app gives different errors but ultimately just won’t load.

It’s often enough that recently when I consider jumping on here I just don’t because there will probably be an issue. Ranging from not loading, JSON errors, or just blank screens and my comments not working…

What’s going on? Is there a status page for these places?

  • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    250·
    11 months ago

    There is a status page up on https://status.lemmy.world

    We have been dealing with some DDOS attacks and are still taking extra measures to get everything more stable but we are working with people in different timezones so it’s not always as easy to react.

    So yes, we are working on improving things.

    • PutangInaMo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      29·
      11 months ago

      Perfect thank you!

      Do you guys need help dealing with the security side? I can help depending on the need.

    • Blamemeta@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3210·
      11 months ago

      Hacker attacks, a tankie power mod, incel, /poltics being toxic. I think this site has really made it.

    • cheer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      You guys have been doing an awesome job maintaining the site, keep it up 👍

    • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
      344·
      11 months ago

      Sorry for being a bit harsh, but I have little sympathy for the admins of lemmy.world. Instead of looking for ways to disperse the people around other instances, it seems that the people behind .world are rushing to grab mindshare and concentrate as many people as they can in their own servers.

      The threadiverse is not healthy when almost 50% of the active user base is in the same instance. The lemmy.ml admins basically shut down their instance for registration and said “please look elsewhere”. Why can’t you do the same?

      • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        50·
        11 months ago

        It’s not that we can not handle the load caused by users or by the amount of communities. It’s because of DDOS attacks and even with cloudflare some of these attacks are challenging due to the way lemmy works. No instance is safe from these attacks but the bigger instances get targeted. We weren’t the only instance that went down today.

        I don’t think we do anything wrong here? None of us are being paid, we all put in a lot of time and effort to keep things running. You don’t know how many passionate people are involved “behind the scenes” seeing you call out the admins of lemmy.world.
        You can’t please everyone, and some people will always find a stick. But I still think a lot of people believe in our team, our policies and what we are trying to do here. If that’s not your thing, fine, you can look elsewhere.

        • Dark_Blade@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          11 months ago

          I, for one, am glad to be on a server that isn’t run by tankies, nazis or some other crazy fuckos.

        • PutangInaMo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Is there a post or blog somewhere that goes into detail about why DDOS is such an issue with lemmy or activitypub? Or are you saying that about DDOS in general?

        • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
          233·
          11 months ago

          No instance is safe from these attacks but the bigger instances get targeted.

          Then don’t work to become a big instance.

          None of us are being paid,

          If not you, someone is profiting from this

          you can look elsewhere.

          I’d love to, except lemmy.world went on to a huge land grab, cloned every possible popular community on reddit and is not giving any signs that will stop. Almost 50% of the user base is unreasonable and it goes against the ethos of federation and decentralization. An instance going down should not be newsworthy, but because it’s so big (relative to the others) it introduces systemic risk and approaches “too big to fail” status.

          I shouldn’t be the one telling you.

          • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
            16·
            11 months ago

            I am sure that it has nothing to do with you having any financial gains hosting instances. And that you do it all for the good of federation: https://lemmy.world/comment/1510374

            Yes you would do things differently if you were in our position.

            @ruud@lemmy.world is very open about what comes in from donations in his monthly blog posts. He even links those in !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. Have a look: https://blog.mastodon.world/june-2023

            He has the trust of every one involved. We are very thankful for the community supporting us as they do and it’s not because income is more than expenses now that it will stay like that. We expect donations to drop off at one point. But whatever happens we will always be open about this. Even you linked to information that is freely available.

            • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
              214·
              11 months ago

              I am sure that it has nothing to do with you having any financial gains hosting instances. And that you do it all for the good of federation.

              Yes for both, without sarcasm. I don’t think that the donation-based model is healthy or sustainable and I would rather see more service providers like mine.

              Actually, I like to see more providers that can make real money and prove that this is feasible. I’ve been running communick for more than 3 years already, and it has been nothing but a small money pit. The managed hosting side of things is just barely breaking even.

              • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
                8·
                11 months ago

                You just sound salty now that you quit your job to start a fediverse hosting company and it’s not working out the way you want. Donation-based models have been used for ages and it worked for mastodon.world so why shouldn’t it for lemmy.world? If donations and interest decreases we can always downscale.

                Sorry you’re not breaking even, seems like running a managed hosting service for lemmy is not feasible

                • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
                  13·
                  11 months ago

                  Donation-based models have been used for ages and it worked for mastodon.world

                  Maybe I wasn’t clear on the blog post. There are two objections to donation-based funding:

                  • unless everyone working on an instance is properly compensated, it’s hard to say “it is working” or “it is sustainable”
                  • it may work for particular instances, but it stunts the growth of the overall fediverse.

                  You might not see it that way, but my argument is that relying on donations hides the true costs of running the server from the users and (like in ad-funded business) distorts the “market” in a way that makes the overall system less efficient.

          • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldEnglish
            111·
            11 months ago

            The instance itself did not do a “big land grab,” users on the instances made the communities. And, as you should know, the fact that there’s a community on one instance doesn’t mean that the same topic can’t be on another, there are several of those kinds of duplicates.

            I signed up for .world because I liked the policies, it didn’t seem to be heavily communist or hosted in an authoritarian country, and it seemed to be robust. Nobody told me I should make my account there; I saw zero advertising. I’m not sure what you think the admins did to make other people settle there.

            And the fact that some people are donating to it in no way means they’re making anything like profit. The admins didn’t make a plea for me to donate anywhere that I saw, other than having the link in the sidebar, like many/most instances.

            You seem to be taking frustrations out on people who don’t deserve it. If the stability problems become an issue, people will just make accounts elsewhere.

            • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
              13·
              11 months ago

              I’m not sure what you think the admins did to make other people settle there.

              They opened the gates and let people come in without knowing if they were able to handle the influx of people. By presenting themselves as a place that could welcome everyone, they end up robbing the opportunity for other instances to share the load and to absorb part of the user base. This is what I mean about “land grab”.

              A more sensible approach would be to have a feedback loop where they open up a limited number of spots, fill them, see how their instance and the overall fediverse behaves and adjust based on that new information.

              • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
                6·
                11 months ago

                You leave out the fact that @ruud was already running mastodon.world before all this. So he does have experience running a big instance. He had a team of moderators from mastodon.world that helped from the start.

                The influx of people was never a problem, if you choose the right hosting provider you are prepared for these things. And the hosting company we use provides all those tools to help us grow. We started with a small server at Hetzner.de and gradually upgraded when it was required. They have no limits on bandwidth so that is also something Ruud looked at.

                Anyway, you have a lot of say about how you would do things but you had a 3 years head start…

                • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
                  14·
                  11 months ago

                  The influx of people was never a problem

                  It’s not a technical problem, but a systemic one. Getting way too big relative to the rest of the fediverse paints a target on your back. There is a reason your instance is being DDOS’d while so many others aren’t and one instance being DDOS’d shouldn’t be have such an impact on the overall system.

                  My point is that the sensible thing to do would’ve been to limit growth of .world and let others catch up. This is what the lemmy devs did with their instance, this is what Hugo from masto.host did to his service (stopped accepting new customers when he got close to 50% of the users) and this is even what Eugen did with mastodon.social and mastodon.online in the beginning.

      • meanmon13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        11 months ago

        They’re not advertising or telling people to come to lemmy.world… people are coming here and they’re just accommodating them instead of blowing them off

        • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
          216·
          11 months ago

          To be honest, what upsets me is the amount of communities that already existed elsewhere but they decided to recreate under their own service. Why does everything need to be under their umbrella? Why not point the users to the already existing communities? It would even help avoid the issues they are having now.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        The threadiverse is not healthy when almost 50% of the active user base is in the same instance.

        Eh, it’s only a tiny fraction of what the userbase will be eventually, so unless other instances fail to step up the “problem” will solve itself.

        It’s not lemmy.world’s fault that people like it.

  • BadRS@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    11 months ago

    There’s been a DOS attack against the site and its database. The admins said they were going to move over to CloudFlare for DDoS protection and yeah, I just checked, they’re getting served by CloudFlare now. Instability issues should go away.

  • Asafum@feddit.nlEnglish
    14·
    11 months ago

    I bailed on them for now and made an account on a much smaller instance so everything loads again. Thankfully with federation you can still see all the same content, you just need to set up subscriptions again on the new account if you choose to go that route.

    • Metal Zealot @lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      I suggested joining a new instance in another support thread.

      For some reason, even though it’s the whole philosophy behind federated networking, people didn’t like the idea.

      Is the mentality here degrading to levels of Reddit fanboy-ism? If so, I’m DEFINITELY gonna migrate

      • mrmanager@lemmy.todayEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        I was really surprised by this too but yeah, people want to be on the same largest instance. I guess it’s a community feeling by doing that. Or at least a feeling of safety, since it’s unlikely the instance shuts down.

        • OldFartPhilEnglish
          14·
          11 months ago

          In addition to a large instance being less likely to shut down and (presumably) having more resources, there’s an additional advantage to being on a larger instance: you have a more comprehensive “All” feed. Since federation with a remote feed isn’t established until (IIRC) someone subscribes to it, an instance with a larger user base should contain more subscriptions to a wider variety of content. Of course, not everyone will like that and you lose out on Beehaw content if you’re on the two largest Lemmy instances, but I think it applies in general.

        • Metal Zealot @lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          At this point, I don’t believe lemmy.world will shut down. But the constant outages are going to push people away regardless. Luckily people have nearly limitless options of instances to join.

          Though, the average schmo just recently coming from Reddit won’t understand “Instances” or “federation”, and just give up on Lemmy as a platform overall once they see how unstable it is. lemmy.world is currently the front-door to the fediverse for a lot of people here.

    • mrmanager@lemmy.todayEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      I got a few new people on my instance that specifically said they wanted a smaller instance while Lemmy.world had issues.

      I think there are like 1100+ instances now. No reason to hang out on the largest one unless you absolutely have to.

      Once you have two or more accounts, it’s just a click in the mobile client (Jerboa, Liftoff etc) to switch profiles. Takes a second.

      You will have to set up your subscriptions to communities again though on a new account. That can be annoying but kind of worth it.

    • rustyriffs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      That’s been one of the biggest drawbacks for me personally. Who wants to go through collecting all of these communities, just to have the server crash and be forced to re-collect on a different instance? It’s very cumbersome, right now, and I hope that eventually it can be a bit more seamless somehow.

  • Captain HowdyEnglish
    142·
    11 months ago

    Use a different instance. That one is overloaded. Honestly I think they should close sign ups for a while.

  • Resol van Lemmy@mastodon.social
    8·
    11 months ago

    @PutangInaMo The instance is likely down. Luckily you can set up an alternate account on an alternate fediverse platform and browse your communities like nothing happened. That’s what I did.

    The fediverse is so awesome.

    • Antik 👾@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      Memmy could have an issue with the push notifications. I contacted the devs about this earlier today. Other than that, if the site is down you will have problems no matter which app you’re using.

  • moistclump@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    11 months ago

    No clue. But, thank you for unlocking a decade old memory of a Tagalog phrase I didn’t know I still knew.

  • adroit balloon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    lemmy.ml is also experiencing issues. both sites seems to have login disabled for almost 24 hours now. if they’re experiencing a DDoS attack, that would finally explain why.

  • Takina's Old Pair™@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I load Lemmy in Thunder and web browser and I sometimes say your username everytime I see Cloudflare error, JSON error, or some other BS like “DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE”

    I hope we won’t often see these intermittent errors in the future as they upgrade more at the back end and on the hardware.