this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025

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[Solved] What just happened to 4 million posts? (feddit.uk)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

62 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Stats from here: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

Like, has an instance gone down and if so, why hasn't there been a comparable drop in users and comments?

Edit: Thanks to @[email protected] here for pointing to zerobytes.monster becoming more aggressive against bots as the likely culprit.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It may have been lemmy.zip

It did in fact go down for about 48 hours... prompting me to make this new account on dbzer0.

Basically, the admin attempted to update to a newer lemmy version... and it failed, multiple times, and they just rolled back, restored the old version, posted an explanation and apology, and they'll be further looking into ... exactly what went wrong.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 days ago (2 children)

But zip has < 50K posts.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 days ago

Maybe they unzipped the archive? /S

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

i apparently cannot figure out ascii shrugs, nvm

I don't know exactly how that post counter ... actually, technically counts posts, but:

Zip going down could have uncounted all posts anywhere made by zip accounts.

There could have been some kind of... propogating post count negation effect, as various other instances reacted differently to zip users posts on their instances could not pull them anymore, on different time scales.

If a zip user had a ... top level comment, on another instance, its possible all lower level comments responding to that comment may also have poofed out of existence, in some respect.

...

I may be misusing some terminology here, and this is just spitballing, but yeah.

Almost all of my .zip account's posts/comments... are not on zip itself, and its possible that that is fairly common amongst .zip users.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

i apparently cannot figure out ascii shrugs, nvm

¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ => ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just so we're clear, what this crawler does is go through all servers that use ActivityPub known to it, and congregate that data to a list of known services (Lemmy, Mastodon, Piefed etc.). How is does that is by querying a standardised end point to get the instance info (.well-known/nodeinfo which will then point to a different path to get the actual info).

For instance, here's what it will collect for feddit.uk:

nodeinfo json

// curl -s https://feddit.uk/nodeinfo/2.1 | jq
{
  "version": "2.1",
  "software": {
    "name": "lemmy",
    "version": "0.19.10-feddit",
    "repository": "https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy",
    "homepage": "https://join-lemmy.org/"
  },
  "protocols": [
    "activitypub"
  ],
  "usage": {
    "users": {
      "total": 4184,
      "activeHalfyear": 718,
      "activeMonth": 485
    },
    "localPosts": 25750,
    "localComments": 122835
  },
  "openRegistrations": true,
  "services": {
    "inbound": [],
    "outbound": []
  },
  "metadata": {}
}

The important stat here is the localPosts, which is all the posts made by local users in any community, local or remote. It does not include posts by users from remote instances made in local communities. You can also see this data on the instance sidebar in lemmy-ui.

lemmy.zip going down will only reduce aggregated stats for total posts by 47,280, as that's what they report for their localPosts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Huh.

Well, I appreciate the info and shrugging magic, but uh... hrm.

I dunno then.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Do comments count as posts? Because losing all comments from an instance would probably explain such a huge dip

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Is divide by zero becoming the most based instance? How did a single bro make best lemmy?!?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's a pretty cool instance. The governance is transparent with a nuanced voting system, the rules and policies are indeed based, and db0 takes decentralization so seriously that he's apparently working on safeguarding the instance against his own influence with the governance system and admin recall votes and such.

Thanks db0 et al!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That's the most based thing I've heard all year--where can I learn more about this decentralization endeavor?

That's it--I'm making an account now. This comment sealed the deal

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

More details in the announcement post: "Adding two new admins and introducing radical recalls"

The voting system allows for the community to decide on instance policies, federation decisions, even a process for instantly recalling admins like himself. He acknowledges that as server owner there is only so much that can be done to limit his power, but he appears to walk the walk. Cool stuff.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Db0 is super into decentralization! Everybody should make their account there!

...wait.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Welcome!

[email protected] should be it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'd say dbzer0 is probably the most leftist, at least from what I've seen. I personally don't go as far as being an anarchist but can appreciate the philosophy. I probably have more in common with anarchy than democratic/plurality governance, if I'm being honest with myself.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wait... dbzer0 is "divide by zero"?

I've been reading it as "dibzer nought"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If I were to pronounce it outloud, I would say:

D. B. Zero.

Like D. B. Cooper, lol.

the... zer(o), 0 swap is... basically old school l33tsp34k... like uh... l00tb0x, pr0n, type of ... dialect? syntax?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I thought it stood for database zero.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Lately I've been seeing a lot of comments coming from that instance that are indistinguishable from the ones I see from .ml.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

There are secret tankies. But instance admins do not like tankies.

If they start denying/downplaying Tiananmen Massacre, they will get banned.

dbzer0 is just very anti imperialism of all types, USA, Russia, China, is all bad.

The admin db0 does have a distrust in democracy and the electoral process and they have a "don't vote in elections" stance which I have voiced my disagreement with, and I have not been banned.

I've citicized USA, Russia, China and not been banned. db0 seems to be sympathetic to Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

TLDR: dbzer0 are not tankies

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The admin db0 does have a distrust in democracy

Clarification: Representative/Capitalist democracy. Not all types of democracy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Since we're on this topic, what do you think about the referrendum/initiative process that some jurisdictions have, such as in Switzerland?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

In Summary:

There are 3 things:

Popular Initiatives - Swiss Citizens Collect 100,000 signatures within 18 months and the proposal is put on the ballot in the mext election. If a majority approves, it becomes law.

Legislative Referrendum - If the legislature passes a law, citizens can call for a referrendum by collecting 50,000 signatures within 100 days of the law being passed, and it goes on the ballot in the next election. If a majority disagrees with the law, it's repealed.

Mandatory Referrendums - In some situations, such as changes to the constitution, a referrendum is mandatory. A majority of the people and a majority of the Cantons (Sub-National divisions similar to States/Provinces) have to be in favor otherwise the changes wont happen.

Basically, the elected officials are more like caretakers than people with actual power. It's not perfect tho, people could still vote in bad laws and racist/xenophobic policies.