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 !kerbalspaceprogram@vlemmy.net 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:
- Chrome: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/chrome_cache_view.html
- Safari: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/safari_cache_view.html
- Opera: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opera_cache_view.html
- IE / Firefox / Misc: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html
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.
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.
Stripe, Librepay, and Github accounts are all closed.
If this is the case, then it looks like they abandoned it.
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.
I failed for the bait. Damn I thought Vlemmy was chill. I even had 3 communites there that were growing :(
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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!
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.
My main account was on it. I have to re find all my favourite communities now
Have you found anything new since the last update?
I’ve ruled out a good amount of leads but I have not had contact with the admin yet :(
Is there an easy way to ”backup” your subscriptions so that migrating to another instance is less cumbersome?
There is actually!
Going to look for the link and edit when I find it butthere’s a simple pc tool that lets you download and upload all your subs and blocks in two clicksThere’s also a python script for it
Is there a way to do so on a phone?
Anyone have the backstory here?
vlemmy.net stopped working (or stopped being useable) yesterday.
The domain was showing as parked in a dynamic dns server.
Nobody knows what happened so far.
