tldr: dmv.social is closing on April 14th. Going forward, the instance will be read-only until the termination date. I apologize for the short notice, but I am setting this read-only to prevent abuse.

I set up a Matrix space for the heck of it in case I decide to open things up again: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

What do I do?

If you are a dmv.social user, consider signing up for another instance. A few that I like include:

• https://lemmy.world
• https://beehaw.org
• https://literature.cafe
• https://sh.itjust.works
• https://lemmy.zip

If you go to your Profile on the website, there should be a link to export your subscription list. You may import this list to other instances. Do note that some instances aren't federated with everyone, and instances have varying SFW/NSFW policies.

If you wish to start a community for anywhere in the DMV area: I will create a post on the big communities here to help spread the word. Send a private message to @dmvsocial@dmv.social by March 23. I will compile a big post on all of the major communities here after March 23 linking to alternative communities.

If you are a server host where dmv.social communities have federated to: I have locked all posts and communities. You should not have to worry about spam. Feel free to delete the communities after April 14th.

Thank You.

I've received about a half dozen unsolicited "thank you" DMs over the last few months. Genuinely, the unsolicited "thank you"s have been uplifting.

To the few users on this instance: thank you for making this instance your home on the Threadiverse the past several months. I've received a few private messages thanking me for running this and providing a SFW-gateway to the Threadiverse, so I hope I reasonably delivered up until this point.

To everyone else: Thanks for the upvotes, the downvotes, the subscribes, occasional comments, and lurking :)

Will you be back?

Maybe. If this does return, I want to give it 6-12 months. If you're interested about this returning, bookmark https://dmv.social and check back in 6 months. In the mean time, I'll post an update to the Matrix space: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

I still want to provide a federated social network for this area, I'm just not really confident now is the right time.

OK, cut the b-s: Why?

I want to make a few things abundantly clear so there's no unnecessary speculation:

1. This was not a financial decision. The server hosting costs were $55/mo, which were extremely easy to manage.

2. This was not done because dmv.social is still on the smaller/still-growing side. I've spent years building communities elsewhere, anyone would be unreasonable to expect something to take off in less than a year.

3. I'm not playing the blame-game and putting this on the Lemmy devs. They seem like busy folks adding stuff in and I appreciate that releases have been pretty damn seamless from a server-administration side.

4. This was done entirely because of my concerns about being a server host on the Fediverse. 99.9999% of Fediverse folks are wonderful people. The remaining 0.0001% are urinating in the pool, so to speak.

I've been weighing this decision for the last 2-3 weeks. I wanted to build a mod bot to get ahead of the malicious images problem other hosts had since I didn't want that crap coming here. Common sense eventually kicked in, and I realized that the risk of liability just isn't something I want to deal with.

Last year, a few other instances had malicious images posted. The admins and mods of the communities were quick to remove it and explain what was going on, but that was a huge wake-up call that "wow... this is... dangerous."

A few months later, this seemed to happen again.

Now fast forward to several days ago, there was the incident on Mastodon where someone tried to shut down Content Nation by sending CSAM their way.. This event was pretty much the final straw with my confidence level in the Fediverse and the risk of images.

Quite frankly, this is disturbing and I just don't want to deal with the possibility of this crap.

This behavior on the Fediverse is extremely problematic and I can't be the only server host where this isn't sitting right.

Anyways, I can ramble on more but I've typed enough.

Hey folks!

For those on Matrix wanting somewhere else to lurk or for dmv.social support, a Matrix space is now available!

https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

The space is currently hosted on matrix.org though this may change in the future.

The Discord server will still remain available for support-only purposes.

Hi folks,

Last night there was a Lemmy security issue (see: https://lemmy.ml/post/1901079 - visit at own risk) regarding an XSS exploit affecting custom emoji.

Last night as a precaution dmv.social was taken offline.

To the best of our knowledge it does not appear that this instance was affected as we do not use custom emoji, which sounds like the mechanism this exploit needed.

Comments federated from other instances containing text that looked similar to the XSS exploit were found, however. To my understanding, this alone should not trigger the XSS attack but as a safety precaution this content was removed from the database manually and will continue to be automatically checked and removed every few minutes.

As another safety precaution, all user sessions have been invalidated. You will need to log in again.

An audit of community and instance settings was performed and it appears nothing has been modified.

dmv.social wants to be an environment of thoughtful, kind, and neighborly discussion. Please participate in a manner that doesn't promote hatred such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism. Assume others are participating in good faith. Please keep content on dmv.social "generally safe for work".

Have an issue or concern? Reach out to @dmvsocial@dmv.social to let us know.

Do note, the guidelines below cannot fully enumerate all behavior we wish to promote and discourage and will be amended as needed.

Federated Communities

This section applies only to those with accounts hosted on dmv.social. Accounts hosted on other Lemmy instances may ignore this section.

Users with accounts on dmv.social are welcome to join other communities in the fediverse provided the community is focused on content that is:

• Considered generally safe-for-work; not pornographic or sexually explicit.
• Not hateful in nature
• Legal in the DC/MD/VA area and doesn't promote illegal activity across states

Communities that go against the above criteria will be removed. If you intend to join communities for the above, we kindly ask that you consider a more lenient Lemmy/Kbin instance to host your account and follow dmv.social communities from there.

When engaging with communities hosted on other instances, please make an effort to review and abide by the community rules. Actions of users on this instance may be seen as representative of everyone on here.

General Content

What to Submit

Anything anyone in the area would take interest in knowing or learning. This includes news, information about what's happening, history, interesting things you've stumbled across, ramblings. The !chat@dmv.social community is available for general chat.

Prohibited

• Inciting harm against an individual or group by promoting violence, harassment, or revenge is prohibited.

• Please do not solicit donations or money. Posts for awareness of non-profit organizations may be posted in a very limited capacity if you actively participate and post seldomly.

• Refrain from submitting content that could reasonably be deemed illegal. In cases where state law and federal law conflict, abstract discussion is permitted but shouldn't give exact instructions on how to violate the law.

• Please do not submit content that could reasonably be deemed pornographic or sexually explicit.

Posts

• Please refrain from stylizing post titles to make them stand out among other posts such as by posting in uppercase, adding symbols, and punctuation

• Try to submit a generally reputable or original source.

• Please limit self-promotion. Community members with an established history of substantiative contributions to content may seldomly contribute self-promotional posts. Members with new accounts or those with little activity should refrain.

• Please use the original title when posting links. Lemmy will suggest a title from a given URL.

Comments

• Be kind. Don't be snarky. Assume good intent.

• Focus on the content of the argument instead of name-calling.

• Avoid generic tangents and perfunctory remarks. Demonstrate or explain why you hold your point of view for us to explore and learn.

• Controversial topics should be met with nuance and well-intended curious discussion. Please don't try to flame, incite, bait, or provoke other commenters. When possible, cite reputable sources and avoid broad generalizations.

• Please don't use this instance or it's communities for political or ideological battle.

Lemmy 0.18 contains a number of bugfixes and UI tweaks that appear highly welcomed: Release Info

Measures will continue to be in place to limit registration, especially as this release removes the CAPTCHA requirement.

It's no secret the bots have arrived on Lemmy.

I've been monitoring https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy and it seems that a number of instances with open sign-ups are getting thousands of new user registrations but have very, very little user activity to show for it.

To stay ahead of potential problems, I'm preemptively defederating several instances that appear to be used for bot signups. If there are instances that contain legitimate content that end up blocked I will be more than happy to consider removing them off of the list. The intent is not to remove access to legitimate content, the intent is to make it more difficult for bad actors to propagate spam to communities hosted here.

Current criteria I'm looking at:

• Little/No mention of the instance on popular social media sites -- I don't want to defederate an instance that became popular overnight for legitimate reasons
• Large number of accounts (>5000)
• Very little local posts/comments (<25)
• Few/No subscribed communities elsewhere (<5)
• Very low active user count in the past day/week (<20)

Throughout the last several days there was an issue when subscribing to Lemmy.ml communities.

Subscribing to a Lemmy.ml community would get stuck at "Subscribe Pending" and no content would come across.

It appears this issue is no longer present.

A list of communities on the Lemmy.ml instance is available here

First off, Happy Juneteenth!

Next, thanks to everyone who's subscribed to a community here so far. I'm glad that a few folks have already started discovering this place, sharing links, commenting, and posting. As a heads up, I think this place is going to be substantially quieter than communities on Reddit for some time, but my goal isn't to foster a ton of activity, it's to foster a community.

Community List

There's a number of communities on this instance available to join. Mind you, a lot of them are quiet and probably will be if/until more folks join. If you have suggestions for more locations I should add, drop a comment.

DC

• Washington, DC: !washington_dc@dmv.social

VA

• Virginia (state-wide): !virginia@dmv.social
• Northern Virginia: !nova@dmv.social

• Arlington: !arlington_va@dmv.social
• Alexandria: !alexandria_va@dmv.social
• Fairfax County: !fairfaxcounty_va@dmv.social
• Loudoun County: !loudouncounty_va@dmv.social
• Prince William County: !princewilliamcounty_va@dmv.social

MD

• Maryland (state-wide): !maryland@dmv.social
• Baltimore: !baltimore@dmv.social
• Montgomery County: !montgomerycounty_md@dmv.social
• Prince George's County: !princegeorgescounty_md@dmv.social

WV

• Jefferson County !jeffersoncounty_wv@dmv.social

Other

• Meta - Where most news/announcements will go !meta@dmv.social
• Chat - General chatter that doesn't fit anywhere !chat@dmv.social
• Introductions - Say hi! !introductions@dmv.social

Fediverse Tips

Joining a Community

If you're on the https://dmv.social instance, go to https://dmv.social/communities and click "Subscribe" next to any community you're interested in.

If you're on another instance, like https://lemmy.world or https://beehaw.org, this gets a little complicated but bear with me:

1. Go to https://dmv.social/communities
2. Click the name of the community you want to join
3. Go to the sidebar, and find the blurb of text like: You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [!communityname@dmv.social](/c/communityname@dmv.social)
4. Copy the [!communityname@dmv.social](/c/communityname@dmv.social) to your clipboard
5. Go to your Lemmy instance, and click the Search icon (magnifying glass) in the top right
6. Ensure your search type is set to All and paste the [!communityname@dmv.social](/c/communityname@dmv.social) to the search box and click "Search"
7. Click the community name in the search results, then click "Subscribe"

If you're on kbin.social: Go to the Search box, and instead of the [!communityname@dmv.social](/c/communityname@dmv.social), replace the ! with a @. For example, [!chat@dmv.social](/c/chat@dmv.social) will need to be typed into kbin.social as @chat@dmv.social

Mobile Apps (Lemmy)

Right now the mobile app scene for Lemmy is still in it's early phases, so don't expect an Apollo/RIF experience right now. That said, here's a few I'm tracking:

• Jerboa - Android - https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa - Google Play Store
• Memmy - iOS - https://github.com/gkasdorf/memmy - iOS Testflight Group
• MLem - iOS - https://github.com/buresdv/Mlem - iOS Testflight Group

Need further assistance?

• Join the dmv.social Lemmy Support Discord for assistance. Yes, "I've never heard of this, how do I even make an account on this thing?!" is valid. (note: this is a support only Discord server)
• Send a private message to @dmvsocial@dmv.social
• Send an email: :

Hi everyone!

On Saturday, June 17th this instance may be unavailable intermittently through the day.

This will be due to tasks affecting the server and network configuration. These changes are being made to ensure this instance is better positioned for potential future traffic and stability.

Hi folks,

An issue with receiving account verification emails has been found and is currently being worked on. This should be fixed in a day or so. Most accounts requesting access have been approved.

Almost all accounts so far have been approved in 1-2 hours, so you should be able to try logging in after those 1-2 hours.

If you do not have access after 12 hours, your account was not approved.

EDIT: June 14 @ 9:45am: This should be resolved. If you are unable to see emails, check your spam folder.

Lemmy's UI seems a bit unintuitive so I'll try to explain some things. So let's get started by walking through how to:

1. Create an account
2. Find a community to join
3. Reading a Post
4. Add a comment on an existing post
5. Create a post in a community
6. Other Gotchas I've Found

Create an Account

At the top right, click "Sign Up".

Now pick a username (this can't be changed!), give your email if you want to be able to reset your password, and write a short thing about what you like about the area. This is to help keep the bots at bay.

Find a Community

There are two types of communities to join: Local and Federated. Local communities are hosted on this server, Federated communities are hosted on other servers.

Joining a Local Community

To find a local community on this instance, click the "Communities" button at top

Now a list shows up with the local communities, how many users, posts, and comments are in each. For this exercise, lets join the !introductions community. Click "Introductions"

Now click "Subscribe" on the right side.

Creating a Post

Navigate to the !introductions community from earlier, on the right side, click "Create Post"

Now fill in a title and content. If you want to share a link, you can paste in a URL to the URL field, give a title for the post, and write a blurb about the link.

Adding a Comment

If you navigate to the !internal_testing community, I have created a Testing thread. Click the "Testing Thread" link.

After the post contents you should see a text above other people's comments. You can write text for your comment, then click "Post" to submit.

Other Gotchas

Issue: Unable to navigate/click links Workaround: It seems if any input fields have been modified, Lemmy won't let you navigate. Refreshing the page appears to make things work.

Hi Folks!

This post will stay updated to note the federation policy of this instance.

As of June 11, 2023: This instance only maintains a block-list of other communities.

Communities will only be added to the blocklist if the community appears to primarily serve as a host to:

• Content that is NSFW/Porn
• Illegal, or at the very least, pushing the bounds of a legal grey area
• Primarily political content
• Bigotry/intentionally offensive content

Due to the limited capacity to moderate at this point, I believe this to be the policy that's easiest to deal with. If users subscribe to content from these communities, the content ends up on this instance and will also have to be moderated to decide if it's something I want to host. I want to be reasonable when deciding criteria for instances, so if an instance is blocked that shouldn't be, I'm open to learning more.

Another thing: I believe this has the effect of also blocking those users from participating in discussion on this instance.

If tooling improves for Lemmy that allows blocking federating communities but also allows those community members to participate, I'll look into enabling the necessary option(s).

I've just launched dmv.social, a Lemmy community for us to chat about the area around DC, Maryland, and Virginia!

Joining DMV.Social is easy. Create an account, wait for admin approval, and you're in! We're excited to have you. Be sure to introduce yourself in !introductions.

Why are you running this?

I'm concerned about the direction of another popular link-aggregation site online but have greatly enjoyed meeting up with and chatting with folks in the area for the last few years. I'd like to help run a spot online to keep the local communities going.

Why do accounts require Admin Approval?

Primarily because I don't want bot-spam and on the off-chance this gets popular, I need to ensure the server is able to keep up with load. There are limited resources to run this instance at the moment so I'd be open to finding volunteers to help out in the near future.

How is this funded?

Right now, out of pocket. I have zero interest in making money off this. If this instance becomes something you enjoy and you feel like you have to do something, thank me with a beer or coffee. Worst case scenario, in the future I might put up a "tip jar" or something but I don't want to think about that yet.

Can I create a community here?

Absolutely! This is a general purpose instance, so create a community for anything you like -- your town, a hobby, anything as long as it follows the rules.

How can I find communities?

There are two kinds of communities you can join: Local communities hosted on this instance and Federated communities hosted on other instances.

To keep it simple, if you just want to talk to folks around the area, look at this list: https://dmv.social/communities and click "Subscribe" to the communities that interest you.

If you want to branch out to communities hosted on other instances, things get a little complicated, so bear with me:

First, you want to go to another Lemmy server's community. You can browse a server like Beehaw or use a community search tool like: Lemmyverse or https://browse.feddit.de/

When you open a community, you'll see on it's sidebar:

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !community@server.org"

Do the following:

1. Copy the "!community@server.org" to your clipboard
2. Come back to dmv.social, click the "Search" button at the top right.
3. Paste the "!community@server.org" into the "Search..." box
4. Click "Search", wait a few seconds
5. Click the community's name, you should see posts
6. Click "Subscribe".