literature.cafe meta

The domain was also renewed. Thank you to @Arthur for all you do. Things seemed to have go pretty well.

Contemplating what kind of local only community we should make. A local only general forum perhaps?

Private communities will be coming! Woo!

Hey! We're still here. Just been busy, still checking and resolving reports though. The image server was fixed but unfortunately we are now experiencing email delivery issues, so be aware of that. We will likely need to switch to an SMTP service soon.

Hope everyone is doing well :)

Things seem to be working otherwise. But it's... yeah. I'll take a look as I can but yeah. If you upload images just use imgur I guess. 🤔

Images on remote instance should show up just fine though :-)

On none of my other accounts do I scroll through local. This is a uniquely great instance.

I wish their were more of these interest based instances. Other than fanaticus.social there was lemmy.film which is gone now. Wish the best for this instance.

Hope it keeps growing!

They seem to be primarily linked to a nostr relay right now, but knowing them I doubt theyll stay allowlist only for long.

Immediately defederated cause fuck that shit.

https://hilariouschaos.com/ (brain rot warning)

Now I'm crossposting from Lemmy to Mastodon, by tagging myself, @robertoqs@writing.exchange. Lemmy's “Title” field produces, conversely, an initial separated line in the resulting toot.

Edit: But only a link to Lemmy is displayed in said toot, and not the post's “Body” field.

Example Title for Lemmy

In case you're interested in #Crossposting from #Mastodon to #Lemmy and haven't done it before, please note that adding an initial separated line (like the one at the start of this toot) produces what otherwise is formatted via Lemmy's post creation “Title” field. It will be shown thus in @meta.

Edit: But “Example Title for Lemmy” is repeated in the Lemmy post's “Body” field.

Edit 2: Edits work when crossposting, too.

It was a relatively quick update, seems to have a fixed a multitude of issues that 0.19 caused.

Also, local only communities are in the pipeline. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/4350

Local only communities will not federate and will be only seen by those with an account. As soon as it's implemented as a feature, I'll make a local only casual chat community for the instance if that sounds like a good plan?

I just mistakenly made a comment on my post on lemmy.world and while it shows deleted on jerboa (up to date app) I can see it on eternity and attempts at deleting say delete failed (not up to date) but more importantly I can view the comment from my main too.

Is this a federation issue thanks to 0.19, a pre existing federation issue or something else? This could be a serious issue if someone copy/pasted their password or smth by mistake (as I nearly did).

Hey yall, just wanted to pop in for a quick update. I'm here and very much alive and well. Things have been kinda dead off and on, just been recovering from medical stuff and just tending the server and occasionally popping in for the auto scheduled bot post.

Basically, I took a break from being super active here for my own well being to prevent from fully burning out. I'm feeling a bit better and am ready to dive back in to lemmy.

---

So, the elephant in the room. As some of you may already know, Meta's twitter clone thread's is actively making steps towards federation with AcivityPub. At baseline this doesn't really affect lemmy anyway since content is very broken out from lemmy into the outside world, and facebook is explicitly building with microblogging in mind. Lemmy is still in its infancy, and it likely will not work with threads when they fully federate anyway.

With that aside, we will not be federating with Facebook or any of its platforms. Beyond all the clear issues such as meta being an active danger human society (reading list can be provided if there's any interest about the evil of Meta/Facebook), I'm here to read and talk about books not mop up after Facebook. Moderation tools in Lemmy aren't up to par as is and the idea of federating with an instance nearly triple the current user count of the entire fediverse makes me feel ill. I hope yall understand.

---

That's about it, any questions? Thoughts? Concerns?

Just upgraded to a point release that should fix up some issues with federation to services outside of lemmy. Carry on everyone and enjoy.

Previous release notes here: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-12-15_-Lemmy_Release_v0.19.0-_Instance_blocking,_Scaled_sort,_and_Federation_Queue

Welcome to the highly anticipated update! Tons of changes in this release, but you might have noticed you were signed out. All sessions were terminated to allow for a more secure user auth flow. New post ranking algorithms and instance blocks for users are the headlining features, but there were almost 400 commits since 0.18.5 so please read the release notes if you are curious about the other big changes. Enjoy the update!

Please stand by!

we are defederated from lemmit.online as the bots there was just far too much already but I'm curious about whether we should do the same for alien.top and or its sister instances (there's a lot).

If you aren't aware of what that is, it's a site ran by another instance that mirrors reddit content over into ghost subs and mirrors the comments as well.

Personally? I'm not a fan. Like, at all. I understand the desire but I feel like its not only asking for Reddit to throw down with a legal fit but also feels just... annoying. We don't need a critical mass of content, we need QUALITY content. More does not equal better.

The amount of spam is far too much, and the fact mod actions between software is busted right now does not help. It's unfortunate but the amount of spam is just absurd and annoying. :(

I'm keeping an eye on their development updates, hoping they can fix inter software mod actions sooner rather than later.

Sorry yall, it's clear that deleting some of the communities from there isn't enough right now :/

Kbin.social has been having some issues lately and I have found a a fair amount of spam in my home feed from it. What's been you guys' experience with it lately? Would we be want to defederate from it until it sorts itself out?

I was taking backups daily and encrypting them myself (yeah....) but thanks to @Arthur we got it automated now. It seems to work, but we are gonna test a restore in a controlled environment just to be sure soon.

Also, sorry for being a bit dead since this weekend. Have had to disengage for my own well-being a bit due to the giant uptick in antisemitism and horrific violent content being posted without any warnings whatsoever pretty much across everywhere online right now.

I'm here, checking reports and stuff. I'm also here and my DMs are always open for any questions or concerns.

<3

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/6097110

> Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program. > > We are slowly getting closer to the 0.19 release, although there is still a lot of work left. Client developers should read this post with information about breaking changes to update their projects. > > Edit: You can test the latest 0.19 code on voyager.lemmy.ml, or by installing 0.19.0-beta.8 on your server. Be sure to report any bugs on Github. > > @nutomic has closed over 100 issues, most of them duplicates, invalid or already resolved ones. He also made numerous pull requests to fix minor bugs and implement small enhancements. This includes a bug fix for federation of admin actions which was released as 0.18.5. He is also changing the way HTML escaping is handled to avoid broken texts. > > @dessalines is working on redesigning the join-lemmy.org website, adding the apps and instances pages. Also worked on rewriting the Docker images to use Debian as base instead of Alpine. Additionally he is adding support for new backend features to lemmy-ui (scaled search and cursor-based pagination). > > @SleeplessOne1917 has implemented support for new block instance feature, finished implementing the remote follow feature, and updated 2-Factor-Auth to account for a backend rework. He also implemented some bug fixes. He has also been working on adding authentication to lemmy-ui-leptos. > > ## Support development > > @dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations. > > If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us. > > - Liberapay (preferred option) > - Open Collective > - Patreon > - Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page) >

Object storage cost: $6.22 (was $6.20 last month) and this will unfortunately probably go up next month by like a dollar...

So we have two lemmy specific servers, we transferred over to hetzner and to a new dedicated server no less! I have two other smaller VPS's I pay for out of pocket (for my blog, my gotosocial alt, some storage and tinkering, and the uptime status page)

Server cost: $16.76 in total, the main dedicated server is $12.69, and the smaller for the alt web front ends are $4.07. Those are loosely converted from Euros hence the weird

I have two other personal servers (one mega tiny, another slightly larger), which I pay out of pocket leading to the overall cost being $26.70 for all the servers on hetzner combined.

Last month we had $20 in donations, this month we had $37.73 (!!!!!) so thanks so much for that as well! It is seriously appreciated! The next two months are basically paid for in advance.

Right now an extra cost that hasn't been added on here but likely will be next month is the backups, I am still taking manual daily backups (yes, daily LOL you read that right), encrypting them and placing them into my proton drive. I am switching over to automating things and moving backups to backblaze sooner rather than later with Arthur figuring out the best way to set that up.

Thank you for your patience and sticking around yall. I seriously appreciate it. It feels so good to be back :)

fingers crossed it worked out well 💀

So, a lot of features are coming next update to help alleviate some of the annoyance of federating with NSFW instances.

For context, I defederated from the NSFW instances because they clutter the absolute FUCK out of /all. I mainly anticipated federating with them in time when it could be hidden from /all, but domain blocks seem to be coming next update at least as well as disabling remote image caching.

Would yall be ok if I refederated? Or should we wait a bit more for community silencing and hiding as well.

A new update was dropped to fix federation admin stuff. Downtime should be very short, but I will be taking a full backup of everything first.

Also, 0.19.0 is on the horizon very soon. This is just a quick fix. The lemmy devs are on a fuckin roll.

Also yes, I am alive. Sorry being partially dead and not super engaging this past week. I've actually been very sick IRL and just generally taking backups and making sure things don't explode while I fight off whatever illness I've been dealing with. Not sure if it was COVID but at least I have not succumbed to pestilence and I have no plans to in the future.

But yeah we got approved for NCMEC's hash scanning system hooked into Cloudflare and I just wanted to explain what it is and give a heads up for transparency while I wait for the on-boarding Zoom call with them in a few days.

So.... what IS that?

Basically every image uploaded online has a unique fingerprint signature called a "hash". With this, it makes it possible to take the known hashes of CSAM (child sexual assault material) which can be safely stored in carefully controlled digital databases. There are a few databases that exist on the market as well as around the world, but the one we will be using is provided by NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) in the US and it is automatically hooked into Cloudflare.

Basically images that are uploaded as well as those federated into the instance will now be scanned with this hash system automatically to check if they are in the hash scanning database we now have access to. If they are matched as similar enough, the images will be automatically blocked, I will be emailed the source URL, an automated report will be made with NCMEC, and I will be able to follow up based on where the URL was found and be able to reach out to the instance it was found on (if it was not on ours)

This system is automated. Your images themselves are not scanned and this only affects images.

There is some privacy concerns within using this, yes. I am personally not too keen on using a software that's made in part by big tech giant Microsoft. But given recent events over the past few months, having this implemented is kind of non-negotiable for me to feel comfortable continuing to host a lemmy instance. I hope you understand, and recognize the importance of this tool.

I am hopeful for the future of lemmy though, especially with upcoming changes and features to address many concerns that have arisen recently. This is very much an experimental software, and we have to make do with what we have. I will also add info to our /legal page informing users of our usage of this tool as well.

It should also be noted these databases are heavily controlled to make sure bad actors who could potentially begin stress testing them do not get gain access to it. When I said I have to have an on-boarding call with NCMEC, that's not a joke. In order to be able to use this I have to have a 30 minute long digital meeting with a representative of a government affiliated non-profit so they can be sure I am using this for the right reasons. I am dreading it, but thankfully the people at NCMEC are extremely kind and approachable.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/

someone posted CSAM from there and i had to clean it up..... again.....

and to be quite honest, the only way im removing my censure on fediseer and refederating with feddit.nl is if its made clear from their admin that they are onboarding at least one other admin or plan on making a good faith attempt to tbh

sorry yall

The mods are back to life there and have cleaned things up.

status.literature.cafe is now fully up and running, as well as two alternative front ends: old.literature.cafe and ph.literature.cafe, big thanks to Arthur for setting the alt front ends up!

For those who may or may not already know, I do run my own gotosocial instance as well for myself. I have a secondary status account there for lemmy server updates. If anything goes majorly wrong, I will use that to display messages as well as status.literature.cafe. The link to the system status page is sleepy.ink/@status. Feel free to subscribe thru Mastodon over there (and turn on notifications if you'd like!) for updates. Hope to never have to have use that account, but it's good have it on hand just in case.

You're also free to request to to follow my main account on sleepy.ink as well, that will be my personal fedi presence outside of lemmy when gotosocial supports account migration :P

Thank yall so much for your patience in this, and a big thanks to Arthur as well. Alongside the support of other instance admins. Lemmy.world admins have been extremely kind and helpful in helping us to problem solve things when need be as well.

I am very grateful that some kind folks from the lemmy.world team actually took the time out of their day to look into their database to check what data they had on this instance to try to help problem solve when we were first having issues federating. With the way activitypub works (the software that powers federation) there are keys that help power federation, and I was worried they had been mismatched. They weren't and were able to confirm when they checked. They didn't have to do that, but they did. One of their team members even patiently helped me try and troubleshoot the instance database to make sure something wasn't borked on our end as well.

TL;DR: There's been very very problematic posts from feddit.nl and the admins have been basically MIA with open registration and open image uploads, I'm monitoring the situation closely and am hopeful it will be resolved soon. But it's just far too risky right now until there's word from their team. I am in discussion with lemmy.world admins and will be following their decision on this one as it's very very concerning to stay federated with them right now. This is hopefully only temporarily until the admin team with feddit.nl are verified as basically being alive.

For lemmy.world's team info: https://lemmy.world/post/4985465

for those that enjoyed the trending community bot, it has been (hopefully temporarily moved to) !trendingcommunities@endlesstalk.org

Alongside that if you want to see our list of censured and endorsed instances, literature.cafe is on fediseer which is a decentralized crowd security tool to track spam & problematic fedi instances and share blocklists in a fashion that alleviates the "central admin HOA" complaints some people sometimes have with traditional centralized fediblock lists.

https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/literature.cafe

Seems like shittykopper was right, and the server was basically seen as dead for a time. We are slowly but surely comin back baby!!! I'll make the "what are you reading" post on Wednesday to give everything some time to simmer and all the other lemmy instance senpais to notice us.

Also, welcome Arthur to the admin team! Please thank them for getting this shit back online and helping fix this mess LMAO

---

We have switched our server provider to hetzner, with a specifically dedicated server now! For now, emails are disabled with them. Gonna try to enable them soon, by messaging hetzner when I can. For now, if you need to reset your password just message an admin.

Server cost for this month: $11.99/mo Object storage with wasabi: $6.20 (last months cost) and right now it is $2.

---

Gonna put this info here for our continued improvement

To-do:

• Bring other lemmy web front ends online (alexandrite, photon, etc) back online. (likely on a different VPS than the main one.)
• Automate offsite backups with backblaze.
• Enabling cloudflare hash scanning (have an interview with NCMEC soon!)
• Restoring the /legal page with a legit privacy policy.
• Creating an uptimekuma page for status.literature.cafe again.
• Streamlining server monitoring using grafana/prometheus to keep track of things and automate things more so I don't have to physically ssh into the server (especially if I'm away from my desktop)
• Making sure we are properly in line with DMCA safe harbor rules in the US.

I'm asking around on matrix, but there seems to be something very wrong going on and man, I'm just tired.

Hey yall it's gabe and this past week has been hell in more ways than one.

So..... what the fuck happened?

Truth be told, I haven't the slightest fucking clue. Our last server host had so much issues in the past week it was absurd. I logged in and was trying to figure out what was going on after the server had been down for a bit, and immediately noticed that UFW and fail2ban were both uninstalled. I panicked instantly and shut down the instance. Afterwards, the server failed the properly boot outside of safe mode and the logs were of zero use to me to figure out what the fuck happened. From what I could tell was either the last server hosts persistent downtime did major shit to the VPS or someone hacked into it and basically decided to pull a minecraft griefer moment by making it so that the VPS wouldn't be able to properly boot up when it next restarted. I have no idea which, but I treated the situation as if someone hacked into it as a precaution and took everything down.

I have to be honest with you, I took all of it very personally even though there's a pretty high chance it was just the last host. Recovering from dealing with the CSAM spam and then this? It fully threw me into a panic. I fully had to take a step back on Saturday for my own wellbeing.

I also attempted to contact the last VPS host, but they were of little help.

---

Thankfully we had databases backed up properly. The last database was from the 30th of August that could be recovered fully unfortunately.

---

What has been done to secure things if this was some sort of hack?

We have fully migrated to a more stable host, as well are utilizing their embedded firewall options alongside the software firewall in case it was of docker fucking with UFW. We have abandoned fail2ban and are now using crowdsec instead as well. There's more robust security stuff on the backend as well that has been done as a precaution. Changing passwords, etc, etc, etc.

Alongside it is no longer just myself providing admin-y type stuff for the instance moving forward. Arthur (specifically who has a background in working with this stuff) has helped bring the server up and has offered to help as they can as well. Finally a backup admin!

What should I do?

The data that lemmy has is negligible in the case that we did have data stolen, but as a general precaution please change your password.

---

I think I should also state this loud and clear here, but I am sorry. I am sorry for breaking your trust, having the instance go down for so long and potentially compromising your data in the meantime. Although the risk is unknown, the fact there is any in the first place pains me greatly. Thankfully things have been locked down further moving forward as a general precaution and the instance now runs much more smoothly. Although things have been fixed and it is up and running, it hurts to feel that I betrayed this community in such a egregious way. I hope you can accept my apology and that you are willing to stay apart of this community moving forward as these fixes are implemented. Lemmy is a developing software with many quirks, and thankfully I feel a lot less alone in dealing with its quirks now.

They have officially begun federating with other instances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minds_(social_network)

>Users can earn money or cryptocurrency for using Minds, and tokens can be used to boost their posts or crowdfund other users.

>Minds describes itself as focused on free speech, and minimally moderates the content on its platform. Its founders have said that they do not remove extremist content from the site out of a desire to deradicalize those who post it through civil discourse.

Place is a basically filled with klanma memes and spam

I am very sorry to those who use that instance. I am hopeful to bring it back up again sometime, but for now it must stay down as I cannot reasonably deal with two instances during these ongoing issues with lemmy. I cannot mentally deal with the toll of having to deal images on both instances.

I did make a post briefly before this that I deleted that said I was going to move the instance tomorrow, but unfortunately I have to wait until next month or else some things will break as the new host blocks ports on your account until your first account invoice. I will still likely migrate when I can though, and will make it known when.

Our host says it is working on the current performance issues, but we will see. I am very dissatisfied with the server issues they have had these past few days.

I also very much am not a fan of doing this, but given today’s events and just generally the emotional toll of having to deal with such abhorrent content I’d honestly ask that if you are able to and enjoy using this site, please consider donating. It’s OK if you are unable, but it is seriously appreciated if you can.

https://liberapay.com/literature.cafe/

I won't go into full detail since it's a lemmy admin thing but someone in a community on another instance posted genuine CSAM today and it got federated across different instances. It was originally just one, but I was informed it was multiple.

This is an ongoing issue that is a topic of major discussion amongst lemmy admins. Please be advised that there is info regarding this that cannot be publicly shared at this time, but know that it is being handled carefully in a coordinated manner.

I'm sorry if I take a step back from posting for the next few days.

Newly federated posts should work as intended.

It was lagging the instance quite a bit, and really isn't necessary given the amount of active users we have now and the communities already federated in.

If you want to see new communities that might not be federated yet though, per usual feel free go to https://lemmyverse.net or !newcommunities@lemmy.world