Feddit.UK has finally kicked the bucket- and what happens next.

TL;DR, Feddit.UK is down, we’re working on making a fun replacement!

A number of days ago, feddit.uk had kicked the bucket.

The community on there had noticed months ago that the owner was inactive. This was around September (Going off of memory). So they arranged to set up a new community run by the same feddit.uk admins (except the owner, the only one who had host access) which would replace it. However, on the weekend as Quackhouse was going to be launched, the owner responded to an email and made two users admins. Emperor and GreatAlbatross. However, they did not have access to the console, just lemmy adminship. Ever since, the owner has been AWOL. The community were too afraid to go back to setting up Quackhouse incase the owner showed up again.

Unfortunately, that wariness and being afraid led to the worst case scenario happening - Feddit.uk has dropped offline. We believe the instance has reached some form of file size cap. It was basically an aeroplane flying with dead pilots before then. And it appears that aeroplane has crashed.

If you are from the feddit.uk refugee base, please join the new community whenever it is ready. Do not sign up now. We are busy and still setting up and don’t want an influx of new users just yet.

For now, sit tight. I’ll update this post whenever it’s up and running and ready for sign-ups. I am not posting the name for now so we don’t get overrun with sign ups. But we would love to invite you back to our community when it’s set up.

The new community will have it’s own unique identity that doesn’t have to piggyback off of Lemmy and Reddit for it’s name. But it will still aim to be the main UK lemmy instance that feddit.uk was. By all means, it will be a full lemmy instance, still federated, etc. It should be the same experience as feddit.uk. But we actually do have fun plans to create a nice sense of identity with that instance if all goes well! I will warn you, it does have a silly name, but that was the name that was decided upon.

We look forward to having new members. All are welcome, whether or not you were from Feddit.UK or not. We will have the theme be a UK-based lemmy instance.

I’ll try and remember to update this post when we are ready.

~20CX12

ilovecheese,
@ilovecheese@feddit.uk avatar

I will warn you, it does have a silly name

Why though? A catchy and memorable name, I understand, but why silly? Who wants to say to people they belong to the ‘quackhouse’ instance, or whatever?

dylanTheDeveloper,
@dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

The UK has fallen billions must now lurk

ButtonMcLemming,
@ButtonMcLemming@lemmy.world avatar

Feddit.uk is now back up. I just checked as of now.

mp3, (edited )
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Seems to be up at the moment still.

Sounds like it went down at the worst moment (right before the holidays, of course) and the admin wasn’t available to bring it back up. If the instance admin is serious about this and wants to keep it running, maybe finding some trustworthy users there that would be willing to act as admins would be a good contingency plan to ensure it doesn’t stay down for long.

Blackmist,

I wouldn’t get too excited just yet.

It came up a few times yesterday and quickly went down again.

squid_slime,
@squid_slime@lemmy.world avatar

Will there be contingency to stop this from happing with other instances?

DogMuffins,

That’s not how the fediverse works.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Will there be contingency to stop this from happing with other instances?

That depends how each instance is set up, just like any other website.

squid_slime,
@squid_slime@lemmy.world avatar

There are community efforts like building a culture of moderators reaching out to each other

20cx12,

We’re making a contingency for the new instance

joenforcer,

With the way federation currently works, it’s impossible, sorry. It’s one of the pitfalls of a decentralized system without consolidated ownership: any of the nodes could fail at any time and the responsibility of bringing it back up is the sole job of that node owner.

Vub,

Wow. If this isn’t a perfect example of the possible problems with federated networks I don’t know what is.

I’m still for it of course. But it has to be done right and this is far from that.

kilgore_trout,

Twitter could go permanently offline tomorrow as well, for all we know.

BluesF,

It is looking increasingly likely that at some point it will just collapse.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I sure hope it does, nobody needs that cesspool.

exocortex,

it is possible now to copy your data to another account on another instance.

in the future lemmy might even support something like having your account automatically backed up to another instance. Similar to a backup email address at your main email address.

Scrollone,

It’s possible to backup your data, but you have to do it beforehand. There’s no chance to save your data once the server goes down.

Mio,

That is something that should be possible: Choosing a backup sync server that have my data(profile). I hope they implement that

DogMuffins,

What data do you want backed up though ?

machinin,

Would it be difficult for apps to do it automatically? Just have a constant backup hosted on your phone or cloud account?

Allero,

Profile backup would be so cool! I’m super for it.

density,
density avatar

I have a hard time thinking how it would work. For example your comment posted at https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/5907612 posted at "Sunday, December 24th, 2023 at 8:40:09 AM GMT+00:00". If you back up and restore to a new account in 6 months, does your new account get to retroactively repost this comment to December 2023? What about top posts you make?

Individual emails make sense as lone documents but on social media the individual items are only comprehensible in context.

If you just want a record of your individual posts/comments without context you can point an RSS reader at the feed available on your home instance user page. (Lemmy users only; for some reason this feature not available to kbin.)

npz,

I think it shows some of the strengths of federated networks. If the owners of a small proprietary social network ghosted their project, it would take a huge effort to try to replace it, which would be insurmountable for many communities. But in this case, a community can fork onto a new server pretty quickly and seamlessly.

SorteKanin,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

It’s not a problem with federated platforms, it’s a problem with any new platform.

Anything that’s been around for less than a year is not too likely to stick around for a year.

Something that’s been around for 10 years is likely to stick around for another year.

Time will filter out the instances that stick and the ones that don’t. Users will go to the older instances because those are the ones they can trust to still be up for the foreseeable future.

pbsds,
@pbsds@lemmy.ml avatar

All the instances that popped up during the reddit exodus were not that thought through. Once the feddiverse stabelize around sustainable communities it’ll work better

HKayn,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

What do you mean by “not that thought through”?

lazynooblet,
@lazynooblet@lazysoci.al avatar

I expect there are instances running on old laptops in someone’s basement. Once the novelty wears off they will get forgotten by admins and die. Power costs, admin overhead, will put some off continuing to host as time goes on. But it’s like a hydra, more will pop up and life continues on. I’m lucky that I work in IT and have equipment hosted at the DC for little cost, so self hosting my Lemmy access is cool in a geeky kind of way.

TheGreenGolem,
@TheGreenGolem@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Somehow a lot of instance admins didn’t really thought through how much work this is and for how long. It takes a lot of time and effort to actually do this right. They underestimated what it takes to run even a medium-sized instance in the long run.

ExFed,

Hard disagree. This is a problem every web service has had to deal with since the beginning of the web: what happens when a host (either the machine or the person) stops working? How do you keep the service up?

Centralized services solve that problem with internally funded, transparent redundancy. Federation solves the problem with externally funded, highly-visible redundancy. They’re still the same solution, just a different way of going about it.

You could argue that user identity is lost due to the discontinuity between instances, but that’s probably something the Lemmy devs could fix without too much hassle.

threelonmusketeers,

What happens to the accounts and communities that were on feddit.uk? I made an account there to create !hellointernet, but I spend most of my time on sh.itjust.works. Are there any tools to move existing content from the old site to the new site in a (somewhat) cohesive manner, or are we starting over from scratch?

Tatters,

I assume no-one, including the feddit uk admins, can access the server to copy anything off it, so it will all be lost.

threelonmusketeers, (edited )

Isn’t one of the benefits of federation that content is backed up in multiple places?

For example, I can still view all the content at sh.itjust.works/c/hellointernet@feddit.uk, despite not being able to access feddit/c/hellointernet.

The Hello Internet community was tiny and not very active, so it’s no big deal to start over from scratch, but it might be worth looking into for some of the larger communities which had compiled large quantities of information.

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

You can see the content but not, afaik, move the community or take ownership of it. I’m afraid you’ll have to recreate it somewhere more stable.

TangledHyphae,

Maybe servers need a contingency plan to be able to communicate with users as to backup options in case one goes down?

Scrollone,

I wonder what happens if somebody recycles a domain that was previously used for another instance… I feel like everything is going to break.

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

Federation will break.

DogMuffins,

I guess I’m kind of asking / supposing, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if lemmy / activitypub doesn’t really work that way.

As in, posts to feddit.uk are stored on feddit.uk. If you read a thread from sh.itjust.works/c/whatever@feddit.uk then sh.itjust.works server will pull it down from feddit.uk and show you the post. It may even cache a copy of the post to show it to another user, but that’s not the same as backing up the post.

20cx12,

Start it again on our new instance :)

SomeoneElse,

Any indication of when that might be open? I understand you don’t want to be flooded by too many sign ups at once but you’re not giving any concrete information at all. Wouldn’t it make sense to at least invite the mods of the larger communities currently hosted on feddit.uk to join yours now so they can more easily move their communities over?

threelonmusketeers,

Sorry for the delayed reply, I’ve been a bit out of the loop. It seems like feddit.uk is back up now, and has stabilized a bit? Am I fine to keep !hellointernet where it is?

RootBeerGuy,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Shows once again that federation is useful since other servers are running and you could post that message.

On the other hand, sucks if you had your main account on that server because now you start from scratch. I am not even talking about your lost posts and comments, more about community subscriptions. Quite annoying to get that all in place again. I used to have an account on the fmhy.ml instance, it was not fun…

bufalo1973,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

The answer, in time, is to have a P2P network of federated clients/servers.

JubilantJaguar,

So, Usenet. Coming full circle.

TheGreenGolem,
@TheGreenGolem@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Yeah, but now with more…AI.

cooopsspace,

We still calling displaced Internet users “refugees”? Seems a little disrespectful to actual refugees with real issues.

Mr_Blott,

I’m sure actual refugees have more to worry about than whether you’re offended on their behalf, mate

cooopsspace,

I am certain actual refugees want to be taken seriously rather than have their collective noun watered down by upset internet users.

Mr_Blott,

I’m sure you think you’re making the world better, but I promise you, you’re not. You’re just trying to make it more about you, and it’s insufferable

cooopsspace,

Couldn’t give a fuck about me tbh

MystikIncarnate,

Imagine, if you will, being so boring that you have to pick fights about how people word things.

Listen, he said “refugees” and maybe that wasn’t the right word. But you know what? Both you and I both understood what they meant by that.

The point of language… any language is to portray ideas between different people. In that context, OP did a fantastic job of that. we understood. Job done.

Instead of providing any discussion of any value or merit, and apparently having the personality of wet cardboard, you chose to critique his word choice on how to describe those displaced by the issue.

Nobody was confused. Nobody is going to conflate the struggles of actual refugees with the inconvenience of feddit being unavailable. There’s no confusion here. Fighting to reclaim the word “refugee” when nobody gives any shits about it (except you apparently), is certainly not going to win you any awards. I promise that refugees care less about what they’re called, or who appropriates the term for inappropriate uses, and they care more about migrating to a country where they will be safe from harm.

Nobody is standing up and being proud of their refugee status, demanding that we treat their term with more respect… I know refugees, and I would think that all of them would have preferred to not have been forced to become one. Nobody chooses to be a refugee, you do it because you’re scared for your life. Scared of your neighbors, government, and national authorities. Nobody wants that.

I know that refugees are proud of the fact that they now live in a place that’s not like the place that they left, but I have yet to meet one that’s proud that they had to flee.

I’m pretty sure they couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about someone misusing the term “refugee”.

cooopsspace,

Lost me at the first line, I’m not even reading that.

Mr_Blott,

I’m sorry but this is a really offensive comment for dyslexics. Don’t you know how lucky you are to be able to read?!? Oh my god so angry I’m shaking rn

👆 You

MystikIncarnate,

This comment made me smile, thanks!

cooopsspace,

The irony is that a dyslexic person shouldn’t be offended at someone else’s ability to read.

Yet refugees like me, my parents, friends and family have a right to be offended about the misuse of the word refugee.

Mr_Blott,

Ah yes, pretending to be offended on behalf of a minority to gain attention, then when called out on it, pretending to be the minority themselves to gain favour

Your “refugee” parents simply didn’t give you enough attention when you were a kid, huh? 🤣

cooopsspace,

You don’t even know me?

lucidinferno,

Displaced would be a better word.

CrypticCoffee,

If you leave it too long, folks will just register for another instance, and all momentum will be gone.

I wouldn’t take too long getting the rescue boat out when folk are in the ocean…

redcalcium,

Yes, it literally happened with FMHY’s Lemmy instance. Lost access to the original domain, started again from scratch on a different domain, but their users didn’t come back and already moved in to other instances.

20cx12,

Unfortunately we had planned on getting the boat out before that happened. But it happened anyway. For now the instance seems to be back up, but this was a wake-up call.

SomeoneElse,

My thoughts exactly; from a moderator standpoint it just doesn’t make sense to wait for another UK dedicated instance to open at an unspecified point in the future. It’s too much of an unknown quantity. If I need to move/copy the communities I moderate while I can still access them on feddit, I’m moving them now and to an established, decent sized instance - it’s my best chance of not having to do this again in the future.

kpw,

feddit.uk seems to be online.

threelonmusketeers,

I’m getting this:

Error!

There was an error on the server. Try refreshing your browser. If that doesn’t work, come back at a later time.

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

Now it seems to be up.

magnor,
@magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh avatar

And now error again…

Iron_Lynx,

I’m getting basically the same at the moment if I try to go there.

Critical_Insight,

Can confirm

Blaze,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Good luck guys!

Kecessa,

As I mentioned in another discussion, the fediverse needs to work like crypto mining pools, you join the pool of servers that share the data load, but you’re just there for data redundancy, users don’t “sign up to your server”, they “sign up to the website” that all servers are hosting together, if you go offline another server has your data so the website never goes down in the end.

kilgore_trout,

I believe the idea behind different servers not meshing but federating, so they can have different focuses and different moderation stances.

Kecessa, (edited )

But then you’re still stuck with some kind of central authority, just let people decide what they want to block from their feed instead of relying on an admin to do part of the job for them.

Right now my admin could decide to defederate from a bunch of instances and there’s nothing I could do about it except create a new account elsewhere. Same if they accidently die, all my data will be lost when the server is shut down.

Have a single website with decentralized servers and triple redundancy based on server location? You’re pretty much bullet proof and it becomes much more interesting for small players that don’t want to get too involved… Just give whatever space you’ve got available to the cause and let the software do its thing.

psud,

Not stuck. You can set up your own instance and be beholden to no-one other than your country’s law

Kecessa, (edited )

And you still lost all your previous data and you’re still dependent on one point of failure, it’s just in your own hands now.

It’s also a question of wanting to make the website popular, if you don’t care about getting more people to leave centralized websites then sure the current solution works, if you want more and more users to join then the experience needs to be user friendly and right now it isn’t, even as a tech savvy person I had a hard time figuring out how to add communities from other instances to my subscribed list and I couldn’t figure out why some would never confirm I was subscribed.

Social Media needs to be decentralized behind the scene, users must not feel it.

psud,

Sure you lose everything from the dying instance. Everything is temporary. I lost so much karma leaving Reddit, but it’s all nothing, especially here where you can post and comment at any karma

If you’re worried about losing your posts, back up better

Kecessa,

You lose the communities you were subscribed to, the block list you build…

BluesF,

This seems like a much better way, in many ways it would be more robust. There would be problems though… This would be even more vulnerable to EEE. Disputes/hostile action between servers could damage the whole website (I’m talking about maliciously hosting CSAM for example).

Kecessa,

It’s an issue with the current method too and hosts could decide if they host NSFW content or not with the risk and curation responsibilities that entails if they do (as we can see with Pornhub you can get in trouble for hosting porn stuff that isn’t CSAM).

BluesF,

I doubt that if one server was hosting CSAM that law enforcement is going to be charitable with the rest of the site just because technically it was just one server. I’m admittedly not at all sure of the legal precedent here… But I suspect the site would be judged as a whole, if not by the law then certainly by the public.

Kecessa,

It’s already a thing on Lemmy at the moment and it’s not as if people were talking about the various instances as separate websites when they talk about Lemmy.

It would be fairly easy to have a post info page that mentions what servers (including redundancies) the content is hosted on.

Anyway, the ideal solution would be that NSFW content has its own website separate from the rest so as not to potentially create legal issues.

kpw,

Or just have a bus factor greater than one.

Blackmist,

Yeah, unless I own all my own data, the Fediverse doesn’t really solve anything. Sure, I could host a server just for me, but if everyone did that would it even work? Or would it collapse under the load of all the data whizzing about behind the scenes?

AlexJD,

Somehow it’s up

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

I'm on kbin.social but subscribe to unitedkingdom on Feddit - look like it is workinhg OK at the moment

MystikIncarnate,

The joys of federation.

If you’re logged in on kbin, looking at a community on feddit while feddit is down, then in all likelihood, kbin simply holds the most recent copy of feddit, and it’s only showing you what it already has.

This is kind of the root of federation. Different, but the same.

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

I did actually click through to the original community to

rmuk,

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” - Feddit.UK

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