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 !kerbalspaceprogram@vlemmy.net 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.
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.
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 @pyarra@vlemmy.net would have made a comment SOMEWHERE.
I guess they tested the config change in production and the server went fubar.
My main account was on it. I have to re find all my favourite communities now
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.
Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed.
If this is the case, then it looks like they abandoned it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(
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.
My primary account is on there. Thanks for looking into it.
Anyone have the backstory here?
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.
Is there an easy way to ”backup” your subscriptions so that migrating to another instance is less cumbersome?
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.
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
