Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 2 points 7 months ago

So the initial plan was just to take down the server and leave comments/etc up on other instances. Your account would effectively become frozen when viewed from other instances.

I didn't want to make an announcement yet since I haven't gotten a script ready, but I'm intending on running a script to at least purge my user account contents and give a week or so for the deletes to federate.

If I get it working this weekend, I was planning on offering to help purge data from people who were privacy conscious.

Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 6 points 8 months ago

Thanks for choosing this instance! Lurking is still a completely valid usecase!

Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for choosing this instance! Sorry about the abrupt closing announcement, but I guess on the bright side a nickname refresh isn't that bad 😅

Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

First, thank you for your work for helping tackle a number of the federation issues (and other bugs!) in Lemmy! If anything, I'm more concerned about the broader Fediverse where there are people who think spreading CSAM is okay.

I'm actually really happy to see that the image_mode lets you disable federated images, that should be a big relief to instances with fewer resources to deal with (in case any other instance admins see my post, please give consideration to using it).

Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hey, thanks for being a part, even just subscribing and voting! I promise you, activity had absolutely nothing to do with this.

There's a lot of risk to take on by hosting images online, possibly hosting federated images, and whatnot. I just don't want to personally assume the risk that entails. It's a very large part why registration on this instance was pretty locked down from Day 1 and why it's had a strict "generally SFW" policy.

53

Farewell... for now? - dmv.social is closing on April 14th. (dmv.social)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by dmvsocial@dmv.social to c/meta@dmv.social

18 comments fedilink

tldr: dmv.social is closing on April 14th. Going forward, the instance will be read-only until the termination date. I apologize for the short notice, but I am setting this read-only to prevent abuse.

I set up a Matrix space for the heck of it in case I decide to open things up again: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

What do I do?

If you are a dmv.social user, consider signing up for another instance. A few that I like include:

If you go to your Profile on the website, there should be a link to export your subscription list. You may import this list to other instances. Do note that some instances aren't federated with everyone, and instances have varying SFW/NSFW policies.

If you wish to start a community for anywhere in the DMV area: I will create a post on the big communities here to help spread the word. Send a private message to @dmvsocial@dmv.social by March 23. I will compile a big post on all of the major communities here after March 23 linking to alternative communities.

If you are a server host where dmv.social communities have federated to: I have locked all posts and communities. You should not have to worry about spam. Feel free to delete the communities after April 14th.

Thank You.

I've received about a half dozen unsolicited "thank you" DMs over the last few months. Genuinely, the unsolicited "thank you"s have been uplifting.

To the few users on this instance: thank you for making this instance your home on the Threadiverse the past several months. I've received a few private messages thanking me for running this and providing a SFW-gateway to the Threadiverse, so I hope I reasonably delivered up until this point.

To everyone else: Thanks for the upvotes, the downvotes, the subscribes, occasional comments, and lurking :)

Will you be back?

Maybe. If this does return, I want to give it 6-12 months. If you're interested about this returning, bookmark https://dmv.social and check back in 6 months. In the mean time, I'll post an update to the Matrix space: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

I still want to provide a federated social network for this area, I'm just not really confident now is the right time.

OK, cut the b-s: Why?

I want to make a few things abundantly clear so there's no unnecessary speculation:

This was not a financial decision. The server hosting costs were $55/mo, which were extremely easy to manage.
This was not done because dmv.social is still on the smaller/still-growing side. I've spent years building communities elsewhere, anyone would be unreasonable to expect something to take off in less than a year.
I'm not playing the blame-game and putting this on the Lemmy devs. They seem like busy folks adding stuff in and I appreciate that releases have been pretty damn seamless from a server-administration side.
This was done entirely because of my concerns about being a server host on the Fediverse. 99.9999% of Fediverse folks are wonderful people. The remaining 0.0001% are urinating in the pool, so to speak.

I've been weighing this decision for the last 2-3 weeks. I wanted to build a mod bot to get ahead of the malicious images problem other hosts had since I didn't want that crap coming here. Common sense eventually kicked in, and I realized that the risk of liability just isn't something I want to deal with.

Last year, a few other instances had malicious images posted. The admins and mods of the communities were quick to remove it and explain what was going on, but that was a huge wake-up call that "wow... this is... dangerous."

A few months later, this seemed to happen again.

Now fast forward to several days ago, there was the incident on Mastodon where someone tried to shut down Content Nation by sending CSAM their way.. This event was pretty much the final straw with my confidence level in the Fediverse and the risk of images.

Quite frankly, this is disturbing and I just don't want to deal with the possibility of this crap.

This behavior on the Fediverse is extremely problematic and I can't be the only server host where this isn't sitting right.

Anyways, I can ramble on more but I've typed enough.

Hampton roads community? in c/support@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So there’s a community on lemmy.world for the Hampton Roads area: !hamptonroads@lemmy.world

However, I can create a community here for it if you want. If you do want it, do you want to help moderate it?

Known Issues w/ Lemmy 0.19.0 - Will upgrade to 0.19.1 when released in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 2 points 10 months ago

I've made some changes related to the potential server load issue and will keep an eye on things.

*Permanently Deleted* in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 1 points 10 months ago

This is now completed. Lemmy is now on 0.19.0. I am postponing the pictrs upgrade until a later date.

*Permanently Deleted* in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So there were a few communities I thought (at points in time) that were a bit too-close to piracy and other rules. The only reason I'm hesitant to allow those are because I want to minimize the chances of having to deal with the headache of anything DMCA/legal.

It is entirely possible things have changed with them since I don't regularly go back and check.

EDIT: A list of removed communities can be found here. The @dmvsocial account is what's used to remove communities here. Entries from other users are communities getting removed on other servers which then removes it here.

Arlington Wants to Turn Vacant Offices Into Breweries, Arcades and Urban Farms in c/nova@dmv.social

Welcome to the dmv.social Lemmy Instance! in c/meta@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To be completely honest, I don't know what the tax implications could be for accepting donations and I really don't think it would be worth the headache to figure it out. The server costs are like $45/mo right now (and the backups are like... pennies on top of that). If there's a catastrophic financial event that would risk this instance I'll let folks know well ahead of time.

I'd much prefer folks donate to the Lemmy devs or the developer of an app you use :)

1

New Community: !dmvbeer@dmv.social (dmv.social)

submitted 1 year ago by dmvsocial@dmv.social to c/virginia@dmv.social

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://dmv.social/post/721818

Hey folks!

As suggested in a request thread, !dmvbeer@dmv.social has been created to talk about beers and breweries around DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

I'll be cross-posting this to the !washington_dc@dmv.social, !maryland@dmv.social, !virginia@dmv.social communities as well to promote it.

Beer community in c/support@dmv.social

[–] dmvsocial@dmv.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also, created: !dmvbeer@dmv.social

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dmv.socal Community Guidelines [updated July 3, 2023] (dmv.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by dmvsocial@dmv.social to c/meta@dmv.social

0 comments fedilink

dmv.social wants to be an environment of thoughtful, kind, and neighborly discussion. Please participate in a manner that doesn't promote hatred such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and classism. Assume others are participating in good faith. Please keep content on dmv.social "generally safe for work".

Have an issue or concern? Reach out to @dmvsocial@dmv.social to let us know.

Do note, the guidelines below cannot fully enumerate all behavior we wish to promote and discourage and will be amended as needed.

Federated Communities

This section applies only to those with accounts hosted on dmv.social. Accounts hosted on other Lemmy instances may ignore this section.

Users with accounts on dmv.social are welcome to join other communities in the fediverse provided the community is focused on content that is:

Considered generally safe-for-work; not pornographic or sexually explicit.
Not hateful in nature
Legal in the DC/MD/VA area and doesn't promote illegal activity across states

Communities that go against the above criteria will be removed. If you intend to join communities for the above, we kindly ask that you consider a more lenient Lemmy/Kbin instance to host your account and follow dmv.social communities from there.

When engaging with communities hosted on other instances, please make an effort to review and abide by the community rules. Actions of users on this instance may be seen as representative of everyone on here.

General Content

What to Submit

Anything anyone in the area would take interest in knowing or learning. This includes news, information about what's happening, history, interesting things you've stumbled across, ramblings. The !chat@dmv.social community is available for general chat.

Prohibited

Inciting harm against an individual or group by promoting violence, harassment, or revenge is prohibited.
Please do not solicit donations or money. Posts for awareness of non-profit organizations may be posted in a very limited capacity if you actively participate and post seldomly.
Refrain from submitting content that could reasonably be deemed illegal. In cases where state law and federal law conflict, abstract discussion is permitted but shouldn't give exact instructions on how to violate the law.
Please do not submit content that could reasonably be deemed pornographic or sexually explicit.

Posts

Please refrain from stylizing post titles to make them stand out among other posts such as by posting in uppercase, adding symbols, and punctuation
Try to submit a generally reputable or original source.
Please limit self-promotion. Community members with an established history of substantiative contributions to content may seldomly contribute self-promotional posts. Members with new accounts or those with little activity should refrain.
Please use the original title when posting links. Lemmy will suggest a title from a given URL.

Comments

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Assume good intent.
Focus on the content of the argument instead of name-calling.
Avoid generic tangents and perfunctory remarks. Demonstrate or explain why you hold your point of view for us to explore and learn.
Controversial topics should be met with nuance and well-intended curious discussion. Please don't try to flame, incite, bait, or provoke other commenters. When possible, cite reputable sources and avoid broad generalizations.
Please don't use this instance or it's communities for political or ideological battle.

4

Set of communities for area around Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia (dmv.social)

submitted 1 year ago by dmvsocial@dmv.social to c/newcommunities@lemmy.world

0 comments fedilink

washington_dc !washington_dc@dmv.social

maryland !maryland@dmv.social

virginia !virginia@dmv.social

nova !nova@dmv.social

1

Welcome to the dmv.social Lemmy Instance! (dmv.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by dmvsocial@dmv.social to c/meta@dmv.social

2 comments fedilink

Welcome to dmv.social, a Lemmy community for folks in and around the DC, Maryland, Virginia to chat and participate in Lemmy!

Don't have an account yet? Joining should be easy. Sign up here and try to log in a few hours later or the following day. If you get an error, it means your account hasn't been approved yet and you'll need to try again later -- this is only done to ensure there aren't any bots.

Be sure to introduce yourself in !introductions.

Why are you running this?

An open internet can be a good thing. I think it's important to have a site for locals to discuss and chat. As major social media sites work to become more profitable post-pandemic, I've become increasingly concerned with the direction they are going. I've had a lot of fun meeting folks on other sites in the area and participating in local discussions, so I'm hoping to foster an environment for that on federated social media.

Why do accounts require Admin Approval?

I don't want to host spam bots.

How is this funded?

Right now, out of pocket. I have zero interest in making money off this. If this instance becomes something you enjoy and you feel like you have to do something, thank me with a beer or coffee if we do a meetup in the future. If this instance is at risk of being shut down due to financial reasons, I'll post about it well in advance, but hosting costs are fairly minimal for a server that'll handle quite a number of users for a long time into the future.

Can I create a community here?

Absolutely! Right now the process is by request because I am hesitant to open the process up due to Lemmy's limited administration/moderation tools, but I'm fairly open to almost anything as long as it's SFW and doesn't promote hatred. Request the community in !support@dmv.social.

How can I find communities?

Check out the how-to guide