this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.

However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.

You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.

Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.

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[–] radarsat1@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I would be happy to use another instance but my account is on this one. Is there a way to migrate an account, or perhaps "link" accounts on multiple instances somehow?

[–] TrippyTortuga@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

AFAICT no. There is an open issue on the Lemmy GitHub repo. In general, all ActivityPub services I've used have this same account stratification problem.

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[–] TheYang@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is scaling the server a largely financial issue, or not? @nutomic@lemmy.ml

could you reasonably confidently say that you could 10x the amount of users for something like 1000$/mo on liberapay?
If so, would you mind setting a "goalpost" for the community to help lift the financial burden?

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think they said they're at the highest tier of their provider. May need to migrate to a different provider and get a beefier setup.

[–] academician@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do Lemmy instances not scale horizontally?

[–] TrippyTortuga@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In theory, they can. But it depends on how it's deployed.

From my cursory look at the deployment docs, Lemmy's default deployment option is via docker. It relies on a postgreSQL server, which may or may not scale horizontally depending on the admin's choice of implementation. For example, a deployment on AWS using Aurora would theoretically utilize auto-scaling.

I haven't personally deployed an instance so, grain of salt.

EDIT: A good discussion about DB scaling here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3005

[–] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

They do, but I'm not sure how well, I'm not a dev, and have no programming knowledge, so looking at the documentation looks like arcane hieroglyphs.

I'm pretty sure I read a comment about it from one of the devs, but can't recall the fine details of the conversation.

I've made https://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/ to help take off some of that load. New registrations are welcomed and it should be maintained for a very very long time 🎂

[–] Gecko@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

You might wanna consider temporarily closing sign-up requests on lemmy.ml similarly to how mastodon.social did it during its large influx. Making a sign-up request and just receiving an infinite loading icon is a very frustrating experience.

Similarly, you want to make it as easy as possible to financially contribute to lemmy, even if it means using proprietary platforms like Patreon.

Overall, the current Reddit API change is probably one of the largest opportunities for lemmy right now, so smoothing over the user experience as fast as possible in the coming days will be of atmost importance if we want lemmy to become a viable Reddit alternative...

[–] grant@toast.ooo 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://toast.ooo is accepting registrations 🎉

[–] 777@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know what happened but in the last half hour the website has become highly responsive again. Thank you admins for your hard work.

[–] lvl100magikarp@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is a new announcement saying they upgraded hardware yet again

[–] bilb@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm going to set up a general purpose instance tomorrow with the intention of handling a relatively large number of users. The main problem is choosing a domain!

[–] Nicarlo@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I was also contemplating setting up a new instance for this. I have 100s of gigs of unused ram, CPUs on idle and a 10gbit connection looking for something to do. The only issue I couldn't figure out was the name. I own itjust.works was thinking of something clever subdomain to use with it. I'm glad I'm not the only one with this issue

[–] autisticaudioguy@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] Nicarlo@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I did it! https://sh.itjust.works

Credits go to you for the naming

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[–] TerrorBite@meow.social 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Naming things is one of the two most difficult issues in IT, alongside cache validation and off-by-one errors.

[–] MyNameIsIgglePiggle@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm getting the following error reading this post: "item at index 2 does not exist"

Should I post this on stack overflow or some other Lemmy help community?

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[–] bilb@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

It's a week later, but I did get this done finally. I've set up https://lem.monster/ . Still doing some tweaking, but it's open.

[–] rusty_spoon@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I applied for a few other instances but this one came through first. Your downfall is being too good compared to the competition.

[–] FaceDeer@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

That's how I wound up here too.

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[–] ghostalmedia@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

IMHO, selecting an instance is definitely the biggest user experience problem Lemmy has at the moment. New users who are unfamiliar with the platform are going to pick the biggest instances, and that's going to create performance problems.

We'll need to prioritize work on instance browsing. Lemmy has outgrown the experience over at join-lemmy.org. If I could wave a magic wand, instance browsing and onboarding would have a way to show instance capacity / performance, a way to categorize and filter instances, and a way to recommend instances based upon interests. That would probably help to spread people out more evenly.

[–] IoniCitY@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

There's a website I highly recommend called fediverse observer, it doesn't really go based on interest, but it has some other factors it uses and I really like it.

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[–] DaveGetsMowed@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hehe just recovered my 3 year old account

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[–] ionhowto@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I use kbin too.

New to this feedverse or how you call it.

Why isn't there one login that can post on all platforms and I have to signup on each separately?

If there is, you're not making it obvious I guess.

[–] anders@rytter.me 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@nutomic @ionhowto you dont have to sign up on multiple instances. if you want to comment a post on another instance, copy the url and paste in into the search field and then your current instance will fetch the post so you can comment on it.

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[–] anji@lemmy.anji.nl 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sadly, I feel like the Fediverse, based on ActivityPub, was fundamentally designed wrong for scaling potential. I do like Fedi and I like ActivityPub, but I think instances should not have to be responsible for all of this:

  • Owning user accounts
  • Exclusively host communities
  • Serving local and remote users webpages and media
  • Never going down, as this results in users and content becoming unavailable

Because servers "own" the user accounts and communities it's not trivial for users to switch to a different instance, and as instances scale their costs go up slightly exponentially.

I wish the Fediverse from the beginning was a truly distributed content replication platform, usenet-style or Matrix-style, and every instance would add additional capacity to the network instead of hosting specific communities or users.

I guess it's a bit too late for a redesign now... Perhaps decentralized identifiers will take us there in some form in the future.

[–] gnoop@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

While it might not be too late for that update, it would require some reconciliation to happen. There's the potential for multiple users and communities of the same name across servers that would need to be considered.

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[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Is there any way to help out with hardware when you are peaking ? I don't have the necessary knowledge about the fediverse, but I was thinking connecting my own server, or perhaps just open a 'help out' page where some webassembly/webrtc is taking some of your peak load ?

I wouldn't mind opening an extra 'worker' page or having a helper service on my server, when I feel the lemmy server is peaking.

[–] highduc@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It seems the lemmy.ml instance is really slow, times out, etc. I fear this will be a bad experience for new users migrating from reddit. Anything we can do? Any place to donate to scale it up, or would it be a good idea for existing users to migrate ourselves to different instances?

edit: I did find the donate heart at the top. Not sure how fast that'll improve things but I did make a small donation.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

the more immediate solution is that they removed lemmy.ml from the recommended instances page https://join-lemmy.org/instances

[–] anders@rytter.me 3 points 1 year ago

@nutomic lemmy.world is a new instance which can also be used.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

lemmy.ml should be a roundrobin dns that sends you to a random instance in the pool. Or else you will re-centralize lemmy and curmble under the IT bill.

[–] Neil@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Except (as far as I'm aware) your account only exists on one instance. So, if I end up on beehaw.org due to the round-robin, my account on lemmy.ml will not authenticate to that instance. I would have to have a separate account per instance which is hundreds of accounts.

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[–] t_var_s@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

something like lemmy-in.[tld] ?

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

@nutomic@lemmy.ml It might be a good idea to default the Communities page to All instead of Local, to help push users into discovering other instances and promote them.

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[–] infamousbelgian@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I checked the documentation, but I have no idea how to move from one instance to another. Is it because beehaw.org is also struggling or am I just too dumb for this?

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

You make a new account on the other instance. There is no migration functionality (yet).

[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Point us to where the coin slot is. E.g. Patreon. We insert coin 🪙, you upgrade.

[–] nachtigall@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here they list them:

https://join-lemmy.org/donate

EDIT: shoutout to the madlad who donated $1,000!

[–] karce@wizanons.dev 2 points 1 year ago

If anyone is looking for a new home I just started a new instance called wizanons.dev! We're magic themed and friendly! LGBTQIA+ friendly and we have a !magic community for aspiring wizards, mages, warlocks, and witches. Discussion on mysticism and psychedelics welcome! Always looking for more friendly apprentices and fellow arcane researchers.

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