Hey guys not to be a downer but like…what DO we do when a federated instance goes down and takes all its content with it?
If you search back far enough on some lemmy instances that have defederated others, you’ll find ghosts of old content from those defederated servers, but it’s all local to whatever instance you’re viewing it on. A large amount of the content from the server that went down should also exist on the servers that server was federated with.
These lemmy instances have got to start running out of storage though, I haven’t heard of any kind of automated purging. I’d bet someone somewhere is already working on an archive lemmy.
Speaking explicitly of text, they can likely be compressed to an insane degree instead of purged, if someone wanted to. For comparison, the entirety of Wikipedia (text only) is ~22GB.
Just for context, the full database of feddit.uk compresses down to about 4GB. I am not sure what’s going to happen to the ghosts long term, but I don’t think storage will be a huge issue.
So this pretty much happened with feddit.de
The admin took off for a business trip and his backup forgot the password and locked himself out. Now the admin seems to have vanished and the server shit itself, making all previously posted pictures unavailable.
The solution is that a bunch of lemmings are forming a “Verein” (Kind of Like a club I suppose?) and will build an entirely new German instance.
So, it’s not pretty.
If someone hasn’t written a software package to do so already, it’s probably possible to write one to dump and clone all the comments and posts on a server.
The comments fortunately are still there, but the images are all gone. They had some trouble that was image-related which led to the server collapsing at some stage. I can’t recall the specifics unfortunately.
Same as when one of the big name hosting companies takes a site down. You hope it’s archived, and if it was important enough to you, hopefully you saved it to your personal server.
What you’re describing is a major benefit of federation. Any site can be taken down. But when a federated server goes down it’s because the site owner exercised their control over their own data. If Google or Amazon takes a site down, you lose your data, but they keep copies to use however they want.
SomethingAwful is still around. As are a lot of niche forums like XDA. We also have Lemmy and other non-corporate ran social media.
Unfortunately, I don’t have ten bucks
Unfortunately here’s the reality: if you want something specific, you’ll probably have to pay for it
Forums are alive and well when looking for car info. Whenever I get a different car I look for communities with the most activity and that is usually a forum.
The one exception I can think of (proving the post to be true) is the first generation Tundra (2000-2007). The FB group had more current news than the forums and I managed to get banned (first time ever).
Yeah I’m on OdyClub probably every other day and there’s always new posts coming in
HiFi folks and coffee folks have active forums outside of reddit and discord.
Please PLEASE nobody tell them if you value your sanity at all
And both of those things SUUUUUCK.
Just to pose a thought; how practical would it be for a small subject owner to run a FediVerse instance intended to stay localized to their domain?
For example: Indie game owner makes a reasonably popular game, they set up a website that Lemmy users can subscribe/join directly, and use that for forums/tips/discussions related to their game. People don’t need to register as long as they have an account somewhere. Some number of users would be new to Lemmy and use that site’s registration for later discovery. And, someday when X instance (the game, or the next popular one) gets infested by neonazis, everyone just moves to another and/or has other discussions backed up.
I don’t know how practical or convenient that is though. I imagine a lot of groups don’t want to risk lost users.
I’m particularly concerned about companies who have effectively outsourced their tech support to Social Media.
I am a Google Fi subscriber, and their customer support is so abysmal that a Google employee started up a “Reddit Request” system for Redditors to use to escalate support requests.
When I quit Reddit in a huff over the APIcalypse, the main thing that led me to not delete my account was the notion that if I ever had issues with Fi, and didn’t have an active Reddit account with sufficient karma to be believed, my issue may never get enough attention to be fixed.
Like many others who no longer use Twitter or Facebook, one of the biggest impacts to me is suddenly not having a reasonably proactive way to contact companies for support. It’s amazing how many companies have offloaded their support staff to half a dozen overworked social media operators. Try phoning and you’ll get “busier than usual” phone lines, and if you can even find an email address it’ll auto-reply to say that it’s no longer monitored.
It’s a shit show.
Seriously, I had an issue with Uber awhile ago and their support was completely unhelpful until I contacted them on Twitter and an employee finally looked at my issue and confirmed I was right instead of giving me bullshit answers.
This is literally the only reason I haven’t deleted my account there is for situations like that.
At a certain point that “unusual call volume” is just the standard call volume. They just don’t want to hire more support folks.
I got banned for something really stupid and they denied my appeal so now I’m kinda just fucked for a lot of stuff, that is too much power for one site to have.
FWIW All I said was “I should be allowed to punch nazis” and I’ve seen way worse things than that said and not actioned on by reddit. (Even when reported)
There are entire communities that “glorify violence” that they do nothing about.
Internet Forums disappearing is a real shame.
For my hobby there’s still lots and lots of old and relevant archived forum threads that regularly help me out.
But for new information, that has all moved to Facebook Groups. This forces me to keep a Facebook account, which I hate and would otherwise ditch in a heartbeat.
So much lost knowledge. Even on forums that remain, I feel as though 80% of all images no longer function. Especially frustrating when said image is constantly referred to.
Man for some reason local musicians are unable to connect aside from the facebook, at least from my subjective pov.
Nonetheless I moved on from the zuck, but I realise I’m shooting myself in the foot a little just to make a point.
We need help communities on Lemmy. That’s what is going to make it rank in SEO and fly. Communities like software help (office, adobe creative products, etc), financial help and advice. And ask docs communities.
Memes won’t help SEO rank.
At this point I try to disregard anything that I can tell is SEO generated though, I wonder how many more feel like me.
Not enough, unfortunately
Honestly who uses discord nowadays? its completely unbearable
Ha – one of my favorite hobbies has an active listserv. They also apparently have a FB group but it’s not as active nor as helpful.
I wish there were alternatives to Reddit. If anyone has a recommendation, let me know.
I’ve heard good things about Lemmy
Nice
I almost feel like there’s an answer there for you, but I can’t put my finger on it.
However, last night I had a vision about th singer of Motorhead. I think it means something…
I’m struggling to see the connection with Lemmy “Kbin” Kilmister.
Didn’t he tour with Mastodon?
ICQ
recentlyis about to shut down so I got nothing for yaICQ
recentlyis about to shut down so I got nothing for yaUh-oh 😏
We could always go back to html chats. Hotelchat, Webmaze…
Habbo Hotel
Lemmy think on it and get back to you.
IIRC there is an open source project for forums communities.
It’s called SMF I think.
Darn you beat me to it haha
Nice avatar lol
Simple machine forums (smf)
phpbb
Mybb
paid - ipboards, vBulletin
But that’s all software to run on your own server
Digg
I know right? Also iirc there was some discord alternative, but I can’t quite remember the name… it’s just as well, the company owning it probably shut it down. It’s not like it’s some free protocol that can be used by anyone, sigh 😞
How do you feel about Linux and leftist infighting?
Give me leftist infighting over Nazi content any day of the week!
Love Linux, but why be redundant about leftists?
Damn Leftists. They ruined Leftism!
The wrong kind of Leftist ruined Leftism, not the right kind.
/s (because this one really needs it)
Sail the high seas.
leftist infighting
There’s a place that doesn’t happen?
Truth social
Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft
It’s funny because Lemmygrad, .ml and hexbear are almost indistinguishable from truth social of outside of plain text
Sure but they are mostly Nazi bars and Klan rallies.
Nobody hates leftists like slightly different leftists.
You take that back 👊 💥
I feel like the tankie brand of leftism shouldn’t be called that. Their embracing of technocrat totalitarians kind of puts them out of the left field.
You know, for all the complaints I see of tankies, I have encountered 10x more people who incessantly complain about them.
I don’t incessantly complain, but my Lemmy experience had improved massively by banning the most notorious instances.
The problem is that a lot of people, specially Americans, have interiorized “red scare” propaganda notions, even when they see themselves as Lefties.
If you don’t just mentally go “uuh, commies” at the mere wiff of communal solutions it’s a lot easier to actually look at certain ideas and judge them on their actual pros and cons, as is spotting authoritarianism for what it is (whether it claims to want to implement leftwing notions or rightwing ones) and tribalism (of the kind that supports Fascism whilst claiming to be leftwing, and I include both Putin supporting “communists” and Zionism supporting “liberals”)
Usenet
what is that?
alt.atheism
Besides Lemmy, HackerNews is decent altho way less subject/community driven
Hackernews is just chock full of techntos who think that since they know how to code, that automatically makes them rational and more authoritative on a subject than most people. Every time I go there I’m surprised by how crappy it is lol
Hacker News might be the most insufferable and childishly naive place on the internet.
Love hackernews but if it gained huge traction outside of the programmer community, it’d be corpinated and enshittified in the blink of an eye by a team of MBAs.
Lobste.rs is pretty active too for tech focused topics
But getting membership is next to impossible. I tried maling them and contacting them on their IRC channel, but to no avail.
Individual websites for niches instead of amalgamation websites
I have been hearing really good things about this new service called X. Very small and friendly community. You just need to register an account and do 12 easy installments of 420.69 yearly
My favorite forum is still chugging along!
If you’re a fan, you’re most welcome.
If you’re not a fan, you’re still welcome, but you probably won’t get a lot of our references.
If you’re a dickweed- well, you probably won’t last any longer than Tom Servo did as an Observer.
Whos Tom Servo
He’s the wind, baby!
Sorry, baby. No one rules the Tom Monster!
I wonder if there’s beer on the Sun…
I see Rowsdower, I up vote Rowsdower!
Well there better be! Otherwise I’m not going to vacation there!
Even many fans don’t get this reference now, sadly. The DVD set it was on is long out-of-print and Tjardus Greidanus won’t grant them the rights to re-release it. He also sends takedowns to anyone who uploads The Final Sacrifice to YouTube.
It really sucks when one of the best episodes of a TV show can’t bee seen.
Yeah, I’ve read about his refusal to let people enjoy it. That’s a shame, as it’s one of my favorite MST3K episodes.
Keep circulating the tapes!
Thanks for the recommendation.
This is a beautiful thing. I love MST3K, I might just join it.
- Make it too big to fail
- Wait for the fall while enshittifying
- Cash in on the bail out
- Go to 2
They are not disappearing, I still use forums like discogs, XDA, satellite forums, local forums country or city etc. You just have to search and find.
