What sort of issues are you having? It’s been working pretty well for me using the PWA.
😆
I think others are right that a lot of the issues you’re having are related to the size of the insurance you joined.
That error screenshot was from lemmy.one, which has about 1,100 monthly active users, which is a 5th the users of lemmy.ml, and less than 5% the users of lemmy.world. I’m not in denial that high usage causes problems if the deployed instance doesn’t have adequate resources and configuration for it. And I also acknowledge that spreading the users across federated instances will improve the situation. But federation has to be reliable. There are active bug reports about problems with how the platform is handling federation, and how activity can be lost
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3435
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3101
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3062
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2142
- https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3121
So the people who are correctly pointing out that these instances are being DDoS’ed by huge user influxes need to also acknowledge that there are still architectural issues with the federation between instances.
While these issues aren’t too big a deal for some communities, they are for others. A community following a sports league and posting threads to discuss matches live and in real time is pretty much only useful with all the users being on the same instance right now. But putting all the users on one instance is making the instance unusable. Combine those factors and people leaving Reddit will either go back to their Reddit sub or find another platform.
I think you may have misunderstood the point of the community. It’s not the posters who are meant to be mildly infuriating
Works on my machi… uh, instance :^)
It’s a years old project that was never intended to replace Reddit, yet here you are.
Actually, it was, just not right now.
I mean, it was supossed to be an alternative, not replace reddit.
It technically hasn’t replaced Reddit yet. This is only a fraction of traffic that Reddit deals with.
I’ve had plenty of minor hiccups on sh.itjust.works, but it’s never failed outright, so far… that I know of.
I haven’t even had hiccups. Been using sh.itjust for a few weeks mostly through jerboa and have had no issues.
Just pick literally any other instance. Pick mine - has worked very well so far.
Dude it was set up less than three weeks ago by volunteers and is funded by donations. It is what it is. Even commercial websites can feel slow under load, that’s just how the Internet works.
It is what it is for now but give it some time and it’s going to shine!
There should have been a note saying NOT to join the top most instances. I know registration with them is without manual aproval (you register, log in, that’s it), but they’re overloaded. Trust me when I say this, it’s better to wait a few hours for your account to be approved on another less loaded instance than to have the account right there and then on an overloaded instance.
Instances I would recommend: vlemmy.net and feddit.nl.
you signed up to one of the biggest instances, this is not like reddit, its a federation so it does not matter as much what server you are on, however adding load to the big servers is causing BIG issues for them.
create an account on a system with less than 10k users.
you signed up to one of the biggest instances, this is not like reddit, its a federation so it does not matter as much what server you are on, however adding load to the big servers is causing BIG issues for them.
It’s actually causing issues to other instances too. Lemmy.world is often responding 429 to our requests for fill in comments and posts. Meaning those messages don’t get processed until some time in the future.
But, I can still understand why people flock to the flagship instances. Just on the kind of network, it’s not ideal.
its hard to fight multiple decades of VC money dumped into the idea that “its all about the domain name”
FOSS is always at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing.
Sadly, after all my years of my existence it’s become painfully clear that, actually marketing really does work. And the better domain name with the better marketing more often wins.
I am curious what the Lemmy projects thoughts are on scaling single instances. Massive instances are kind of against the design but clearly users people want them so I have no idea what the plan is.
It could be possible for an instance to load balance itself with some work. But the issue there is, most instances are run by one person using their own money or donations, so adding more infra to spread the load costs money.
i don’t think people “want” them IMO, I think you have a lot of people that aren’t understanding the concept of federation. I am “that guy” trying to explain that letting instances get too big creates the same “reddit” problems again. Its better to move control over your space to something more local IMO.
there are also plans to add some scaling so I do expect there to be support for big instances.
I haven’t seen a single advantage of being on a big server (i have accounts on a lot of these systems). My small instance of less than 100 users currently loads pretty much everything I have no issues posting or getting replies, there is an odd issue here and there but you get the same big instance to big instance as well, its more in the servers impl that needs smoothing.
Small instances are fast and you get A LOT of control over your All and other pages.
Most internet users that started using the internet in the last 10 years or so think a centralized internet is a normal internet, they think domains rule the world. We need to teach them how this really works and how we don’t need to bend knee to people to communicate.
Most internet users that started using the internet in the last 10 years or so think a centralized internet is a normal internet, they think domains rule the world. We need to teach them how this really works and how we don’t need to bend knee to people to communicate.
Which is funny, since federated systems have existed for a long time. Prime example would be e-mail. And people seem to mostly understand that.
And how many people run their own email server? Would people be happy if the people serving their email said that the users can’t get all their email on certain days because too many people are sending email that day?
this happens all the time in email though, its not a guarantied delivery system.
it took decades for the protocol impls to smooth out.
You’re right, it isn’t a guaranteed system. This is why a lot of people and companies farm out their email to larger companies.
hop on the lemmy admin chat on matrix and see what you get with that line, running email is not that hard, finding a clean IP can be a pain though. Thats about all these big services are gatewaying. SMTP and IMAP is not that hard to run, even easier for a small user system.
Well, that sounds kinda aggressive to me… But maybe not. Please excuse if I misunderstood your tone here.
I see it like this: With Reddit and other modern social media that works centralized and is seemingly “free”, the user is usually the product. Ads are served, there are premium plans, etc. With Lemmy, KBin and other parts of the fediverse, you are not the product and you also don’t have to pay anything to use our services. We run instances for free. Just for the sake of it to give back to the community. I do it out of my own belief that federated systems are the future. That’s it.
I personally think that people have no right to be oblivious about how this entire system works. They’re not entitled to anything here. And yes, I expect everyone here to at least somewhat understand that Lemmy doesn’t work in the same way Reddit works. And I also expect them to understand that there are going to be growing pains and other things that have to be ironed out. Every single one of us here, admin or user, is in the process of building a new, interconnected community.
I get that there are people who aren’t happy about the situation with overloaded instances, but the solution is right there: Have many smaller instances and not have everyone flock to one or two big instances. Bam. Problem solved.
Btw.: I do run my own e-mail server. 😅
Please excuse if I misunderstood your tone here.
I’m not trying to be aggressive, but short replies usually get seen as more aggressive than long ones.
We run instances for free.
For now, because the cost of serving is low. I already know of some instances that are taking donations due to rapidly increasing server costs. I don’t know if the donation model is going to be sustainable as more instances grow.
Have many smaller instances and not have everyone flock to one or two big instances. Bam. Problem solved.
It isn’t just about one of two instances. I won’t be surprised if the number of communities get locked down in instances as a way to control server costs. However, there is value in having groups of a certain size, and I think the Fedeverse isn’t at that size yet.
Some people understand that. Most people have no idea how email works.
It’s magic right? Gotta be magic.
The romantic idea of people running their own servers has never been sustainable. The reason that the Internet centralized was because, outside of a small group of people, no one wants to put in the effort and investment to self host all services.
Most users aren’t going to accept “sure it is broken, but you are free” as a reason why they can’t go to their favorite communities. They are going to find communities that don’t break down as often, either on Lemmy or somewhere else.
email, usenet, fidonet, irc, phpbb, invision, bbses say hello
i ran forums of 10k users and “paying for it” was never the problem
we didnt stop hosting these because we got tired of it, we stopped because people ran off to centralized networks because so many were convinced being on the “same domain” is the best idea via marketing.
two big lies have been perpetuated on the modern internet:
- running your own server is hard
- only big companies can do it
nothing was wrong with the old system other than the fact that individual forums are not going to spend money to out-market valley VC’s
people either want systems that represent them, or they want to be on systems that represent others first. I don’t think they realize these are the decisions they are making, since most have no knowledge of what the internet truly is.
[A] big lie[ is] running your own server is hard
I never said hard, I said not worth doing. Think of the number of hours you spend in a month to keep your servers running. Maybe 4? Half a weekend?
What kind of internet connection do you need to host this? Can you get away with a basic cable internet package? Could you have done that 10 years ago? What kind of server do you run? How often do you need to replace either parts of it or all of it? I’m not going to ask about software costs since you are likely going FOSS and the real cost to that software is time, mentioned above.
So, as an expert in your field, how much money and time does it take for you? Now, what about others? Are they going to be able to spend the time and money it took you to get to your level? Do they want to if they have other interests?
Downvote rather than argue, thanks for showing your colors.
I was running forums in the 90s. I was lucky living near the space coast, and I shared my fortune with others online. Still do.
These are not expensive or hard to run, and they werent back then either. I guess to that I say…git gud scrub
I didn’t downvote you.
Also, you’ve been doing sysadmin work of some form for about 3 decades. That puts you in a very small subset of knowledge holders. I think you are underplaying your knowledge base; it would be like a auto mechanic telling me I can rotate my tires and change my oil.
And why should the scrubs git gud when they can pay someone to do the hard work for them.
Federation is hugely unreliable right now across multiple instances.
https://beehaw.org/post/903610
I have a small community on lemmy.ml with 30 posts over the last three weeks and constantly out of sync (by days) between lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, lemmy.one, and sh.itjust.works. Some posts just flat don’t show up on other instances unless you directly @ mention users on those instances, and even then the comments aren’t all synced. And forget about beehaw, hasn’t received any of the lemmy.ml or lemmy.one posts in 3 weeks!
i expect this to get smoothed out, for my system its a minority of posts having the issue. I expect P2P growing pains, price of more control and freedom.
lets not expect equal levels of investment in the code bases…yet.
Posting language could also be an issue if posts don’t show at all. Try not to select a language when posting, leave it on undetermined, don’t select English or something esle. The Autism community on sh.just.works (I think 🤔) had this problem. Their main mod alsways chose English when posting a new post or comment and a large portion of the comments can’t be seen from a lot of instances, unless you have selected (ticked) English in the languages on your profile.
Thanks. I was indeed burned by language filter setting when I first joined, but I just went and enabled all languages in my profile and the community settings. I have been quite diligent about setting the language on all my posts/comments. I don’t think it’s the issue, when there are comments like this
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3435#issuecomment-1615977831
It should improve a lot as more of the network upgrades to 0.18.1 - messages sent from 0.17.4 are currently disregarded if they’re older than 10 seconds (which is one of several causes for federation issues) and this lifetime is significantly increased in 0.18.1!
I see a post from sh.itjust.works with the language set to english federated to lemmy.ml
but then not from lemmy.ml to lemmy.one, and the comment in that post made on lemmy.ml did not make it back to the post on sh.itjust.works.Oh but now this is interesting, I can see that post on the poster’s page on lemmy.one! I have seen something similar, where two posts with the same URL in the same community are marked as cross-posts of each other and the second one doesn’t show up in the feed. But this post in particular is not listed as a cross-post, and I’m fairly certain no other post in the community has the same URL. But at least I know the post was actually sent from lemmy.ml to lemmy.one!
Yeah, you could be right. I’ve seen similar issues (I have like 5 accounts, lol 😂). One post shows up on one feed, another doesn’t, you search for communities with a direct link in the search in the web UI (which is supposed to be the definitive search, if it doesn’t show up there, it ain’t showing up), one instance shows the community, another doesn’t. To be honest, the only instance that didn’t show certain communities was sh.itjust.works, so it might be a defderation problem (they’re blocked by many instances by now), lemmy.fmhy.ml and vlemmy.net showed almost all of the communities I searched from them, except for a few.
Exactly. Federated services are great, for sure, it just needs to be more reliable under load than any individual instance.
I stated this many times in many communities, ever since the migration started over 3, 4 weeks ago, change the find an instance sites to keep a note to tell users NOT to register on the most populated instances, the ones at the top, but to find an instance that is a lot less populated. But, I guess no one actually took that seriously or it didn’t get through, IDK.
sh.itjust.works was pretty empty a month ago, but the name is catchy and it got swarmed over the last month… not as much as lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, but still. Now I recommend vlemmy.net or feddit.nl.
Its not “a website”, its many instances of a database with many different ways to tap into it, and you signed up in the most overloaded instance.
There is 1 server running the instance you are on. One. For tens of thousands of people. Compare that to millions of servers that the biggest social sites use.
To be honest, one of their servers could probably serve up to 100k users, but theirs are not made from scrap parts and budget VPSes.
I don’t get why lemmy.world doesn’t close signups until they ironed out the issues. In the last 2-3 days, my feed was pretty much full of people whining about “Lemmy performance” and almost everyone was from lemmy.world.
Why not just sign up with one of the other instances? I said it and will say it again: This is a federated system. It doesn’t matter much which instance you register an account with. I run my own public instance and I see all the content without having issues at all.
join-lemmy.org should be revised to not suggest big instances all the time. It should be shuffled. This will cause a bad user experience for everyone and people will think this is Lemmy’s fault in general.
Join-lemmy would need to be opt-in first. Lots of the smaller instances are people experimenting or instances meant for owner and friends
I would love this, running a SFW topical instance but ok to let people make it home. Have plenty of capacity and no plans to shut it down. Last system i ran lasted almost 15 years before it shut down due to utter lack of use…because reddit.
Yes, I’m in the very same boat. I spun up my instance and people are coming, mostly as lurkers, though. Which is fine for me.
However, I also don’t plan to shut down my instance for years to come, as long as Lemmy (or forks of it) is going to be supported. Should I fall ill or get sick of hosting it, my plan would be to hand over control to someone else.
I also run regular off-site backups, etc.
I always used forums as 1st level knowledge stores, bascially where stuff lives before its promoted to a more durable and catalogable format like a wiki. doing it in public as much as you can is just the way IMO. I was starting to use reddit before they made these moves, happy to be back to doing it the old ways!
Adding your communities to my server (subbing stats syncing).
Here are a couple you might find interesting:
Yes, that’s true, as well.
Most people default to the main server. It’s easier that way. A major weakness of Lemmy is how if I use the main URL of another instance, it will say I’m not logged in, and I have to cut and paste a parameter and paste it onto the end of Lemmy.world to gain access. It’s kind of annoying so since most of the main action is on Lemmy.world, I prefer to make an account here and stay within this instance as much as I can.
I personally use a userscript in the browser to avoid that. But for the normal user, it’s probably an issue, yes. But honestly, I don’t have to do what you describe all that often. I just find what I’m searching for using my instance’s search feature and all the “action” from other instances appears in my feed just fine and I can interact with it, as if I was on that instance the action is happening on. I do have a seeder script running on the server, though. It periodically searches for trending communities on the larger instances and pulls that in. Pretty much the same thing that’d happen if a regular user on my instance would look up communities on other servers.
I made an iOS shortcut so I can click it in the share menu and it’ll load a search for the current url on my instance’s search. Works well enough for now.
Funny thing, I landed at join-lemmy.org when I first decided to (mostly) bail from reddit. I do not know how but I was redirected to sign-up on lemmy.one, relatively small. Users can’t create communities here but I don’t have time for that shit anyway.
A lot of stuff happened in the last 2 weeks.
So a couple things:
- Lemmy is decently old but it is Open Source so it is built by people in their free time
- Lemmy is built to be defederated meaning that we are supposed to have many small instances instead of one massive one like reddit
- Lemmy.world is new, created in the fallout of the API change for sure
All of that is to say, yes we are going through growing pains. Lemmy wasnt designed or tested at this scale for single instances before so we are kind of at the bleeding edge right now. Do with that what you will but I am enjoying talking to y’all enough that I’ll stick through it.
nigger faggot
shititjustworks needs to sort out their moderation strategy, new users posting slurs like this from their instance is really unproductive
It is “old”, but it isn’t mature. As you’ve said, this month has probably been the first real stress test of the system as is and we are finding faults, as would be expected.
People forget that Reddit also went through a ton of growing pains. Any platform is going to have to deal with it.
What site are you talking about exactly?
He’s on lemmy.world, so probably that one.
