Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Most of these ‘attacks’ are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN. Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.
For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.
What makes Lemmy interesting is that you can see the combined upvotes and downvotes. It’s not a “net” votes system like some shithole site whose name I will not mention. So I think people can read into the voting system much more than they might have been able to do on some other awful and alienating place.
But, I too disagree with the conspiratorial comment that there are operatives downvoting people on Lemmy, as if that could do anything meaningful. I think the notion that Lemmy is being hacked because the major social media companies are afraid of it, is also very extreme and conspiratorial.
I agree we should support this community and people’s ability to react positively or poorly to a post or comment.