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.
I think the admin pyarra mentioned, that they had to restart the server at least once a day, otherwise the RAM would get too full. Maybe they had no time to do that?
Maybe they have faced some kind of mental health crisis, that made them abandon everything? Maybe they faced huge financial problems or the Irish IRS flatlined all his bank accounts? They seemed fine yesterday, so who knows.
It is weird tho, that the vlemmy site still kind of works, even if the connection is extremely slow and unstable.
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.
Thanks for checking it out
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.
Out of the loop 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.
Many thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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!
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.
He was literally asking for applications for additional mods. I don’t think he just abandoned it.
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.
Excellent!
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.
Agreed. It sounds to me like lemm.ee is in good hands.
I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(
Sorry for your loss, hopefully you can rebuild them quickly
Lemmy.world just got fucked too… wtf do we even do now?
Looks like it’s fixed now. Seems like the vulnerability was stemming from Lemmy code and not .world-specific so not really their fault.
My primary account is on there. Thanks for looking into it.
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 butthere’s a simple pc tool that lets you download and upload all your subs and blocks in two clicksThere’s also a python script for it
Is there a way to do so on a phone?
Have you found anything new since the last update?
I’ve ruled out a good amount of leads but I have not had contact with the admin yet :(
While I understand everyone’s belief that the admin, @pyarra@vlemmy.net, 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. @pyarra@vlemmy.net 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.
Why would the admin close the donation platform accounts immediately after this supposed attack?
Why did they not create a second account to clarify right here, what happened?
I personally could (after many tries) load the site with my account logged in and saved my list of subscriptions.
Can you replicate the PrinceHabib screenshot in incognito mode?
Maybe this is some Lemmy glitch that randomly gives you access to other users’ accounts under very specific circumstances?
I personally think that the admin got busted by the IRS or got involved with law enforcement for a reason unrelated to Lemmy, which is why their payment accounts got flatlined.
Vlemmy maybe is just running on their homeserver, but the server has some issues, that the admin can not fix right because they are in prison/in a hospital/dead or something similar.
Is there a way to migrate my communities?
Is there a way to migrate my communities?
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.
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.
I found something like that. I will definitely be diversifying more in the future
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.
His last post was about adding more admins to the instance. So it didn’t seem like he was going to abandon it.
I guess they tested the config change in production and the server went fubar.
And it went down so catastrophically that it closed the admin donation accounts. That was a hell of a crash.
Yes, I really hope it comes back online, that’s where my main account is. I hope the lack of communication ends soon anyway.
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.
