cross-posted from: https://waveform.social/post/310138

Hi there,

I have decided to take down waveform.social. There are too many nefarious actors trying to break it and I don’t have the time or energy to keep fighting them off.

For your information: Over the pas month I have had to:

  1. Add various DDOS prevention measures to block unwanted (repeated) signups.
  2. Delete a bunch of literal white noise uploads that filled my 4TB picture storage… Twice.
  3. Repair Lemmy (or rather pictures) after it crashed because of full storage.

I will keep waveform.social active until Friday next week so you can pull data from here, though I expect most of it has been federated to other servers anyway.

  • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    96
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    I mean, that instance had open registrations with no checks (meaning no email required, no manual approvement, no captcha). Not surprising people were misusing it - you can just automatically create hundreds of accounts in a few seconds.

  • Jerry on PieFed@feddit.online
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    1 year ago

    As one Admin to another, I’m sad to hear that we’re losing a good instance. And, I’m sorry that people ruined your fun.

    Thanks for all you’ve done. All the best to you.

  • edric@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    Damn, I was just about to create an account there. I guess lemmy.studio is the only other relatively “large” instance?

  • indomara@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    I am sorry that your work has been ruined. Thank you for all the time and effort you put in, these instances are what makes lemmy a unique place to be. I hope in the future when lemmy has grown up a bit there will be tools so people like you with a passion for creating a community can do so without this sort of strife. <3

  • wiki_me@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Like when it happens with FOSS, admins are starting to burn out, better to have at least two people working on a instance IMO (A bus factor of more then one).

  • 1984@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I’m really sorry to hear this. If someone wants to target an instance and create enough work so it becomes impossible to maintain it, they can.

    This is why we need to spread out on many different instances. Maybe you have noticed that every time Lemmy.world is attacked, there’s almost no content anymore. We can change that by spreading out and posting from different instances.

    If a few of them are attacked, then it doesn’t affect the entire fediverse.

    • nin0dev@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      i don’t think he has time to waste on that, he too busy thinking of more ways to fuck up reddit.

      • Karlos_Cantana@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Then why this sudden influx of attacks? I would assume it’s someone upset at the growth of Lemmy, but I could be totally off base.

        • shagie@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          There are some people who just want to watch the world burn.

          A small lemmy site is often has lax administration and no mitigation for the attacks and so it is easy to point a DDOS at it and take it down and then the attackers get to watch people complain about it.

          Additionally, the “white noise file uploads” are likely encrypted content rather than “I just want to fill up the database”. I’d be willing to bet that it is CSAM material.

          People leaving reddit are barely a blip on most /r’s and the Lemmy’s growth for the past month is less than that of a popular cat sub on Reddit.

          Spez would also likely try to avoid doing things that are illegal and would put him or Reddit in legal jeopardy. Random DDOS fall into that category. Spez may be an ass, but he’s more than likely an ass that would rather not waste his time with things that could send him to jail.