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.
I absolutely refuse to use a service with ads unless I can block them. I’m very strongly opposed to any kind of advertising, and I absolutely despise the fact that everything on the internet is ad or sponsor-driven these days.
Paying for an ad-free service, however, is fine with me.
Then what about ads by default but you can pay to remove it? I think it’s important to think about the cost structure of these “free” spaces so that they have the proper support for longevity. That being said, I feel Wikipedia is a fine example of how we could also do it, donations with some transparency on what’s needed to keep things running. But iono, I’m pretty ignorant about the true cost of running something like lemmy at scale.