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 [email protected] 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:

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.

  • cyd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    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.
  • iso@lemy.lolEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed.

    If this is the case, then it looks like they abandoned it.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
      92·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • RatzChatsubo@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(

      • Atiran@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          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.

      • iso@lemy.lolEnglish
        52·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • hemmes@lemmy.oneEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • iso@lemy.lolEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • hemmes@lemmy.oneEnglish
              4·
              1 year ago

              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.

            • Encode1307@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              He was literally asking for applications for additional mods. I don’t think he just abandoned it.

            • llama@lemm.eeEnglish
              11·
              1 year ago

              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.

              • iso@lemy.lolEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                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 :)

                • llama@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  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!

      • BitOneZero @ .world@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          Looks like it’s fixed now. Seems like the vulnerability was stemming from Lemmy code and not .world-specific so not really their fault.

  • filthy_lint_ball@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    While I understand everyone’s belief that the admin, @[email protected], abandoned the instance, I do not believe so for a few key reasons:

    1. 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.
    2. 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. @[email protected] 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.
    3. 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.

    • carbotect@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I just saw your post. I have this thread bookmarked since it’s pretty interestibg, tbh. I’d love to know what exactly happened.

      I completely agree wih those 3 points, although I do think #1 is pretty weak (no offense, but I considered that and I wrote it off).

      #2 is interesting because of the timing. I saw the owner post about it, but there was no indication that he was in a panic because of it. Personally, so far I am leaning towards this as the smoking gun, although the donation links being down kind of throws a wrench there.

      #3 is something I believe can be significant. Problem is idk much about that area.

      What’s your personal opinion about what happened?

  • carbotect@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Madbrad200@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • flipht@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • Raildrake@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes, I really hope it comes back online, that’s where my main account is. I hope the lack of communication ends soon anyway.

  • TheSaneWriter@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.