Hi folks,

Last night there was a Lemmy security issue (see: https://lemmy.ml/post/1901079) regarding an XSS exploit affecting custom emoji.

Last night as a precaution dmv.social was taken offline.

To the best of our knowledge it does not appear that this instance was affected as we do not use custom emoji, which sounds like the mechanism this exploit needed.

Comments federated from other instances containing text that looked similar to the XSS exploit were found, however. To my understanding, this alone should not trigger the XSS attack but as a safety precaution this content was removed from the database manually and will continue to be automatically checked and removed every few minutes.

As another safety precaution, all user sessions have been invalidated. You will need to log in again.

An audit of community and instance settings was performed and it appears nothing has been modified.

Update: Yesterday a RC version of Lemmy-UI was installed to mitigate this issue. We've now upgraded to the official 0.18.2 release of Lemmy-UI.

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 mostly hosts 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.

Lemmy 0.18 contains a number of bugfixes and UI tweaks that appear highly welcomed: Release Info

Measures will continue to be in place to limit registration, especially as this release removes the CAPTCHA requirement.

It's no secret the bots have arrived on Lemmy.

I've been monitoring https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy and it seems that a number of instances with open sign-ups are getting thousands of new user registrations but have very, very little user activity to show for it.

To stay ahead of potential problems, I'm preemptively defederating several instances that appear to be used for bot signups. If there are instances that contain legitimate content that end up blocked I will be more than happy to consider removing them off of the list. The intent is not to remove access to legitimate content, the intent is to make it more difficult for bad actors to propagate spam to communities hosted here.

Current criteria I'm looking at:

• Little/No mention of the instance on popular social media sites -- I don't want to defederate an instance that became popular overnight for legitimate reasons
• Large number of accounts (>5000)
• Very little local posts/comments (<25)
• Few/No subscribed communities elsewhere (<5)
• Very low active user count in the past day/week (<20)

Throughout the last several days there was an issue when subscribing to Lemmy.ml communities.

Subscribing to a Lemmy.ml community would get stuck at "Subscribe Pending" and no content would come across.

It appears this issue is no longer present.

A list of communities on the Lemmy.ml instance is available here

First off, Happy Juneteenth!

Next, thanks to everyone who's subscribed to a community here so far. I'm glad that a few folks have already started discovering this place, sharing links, commenting, and posting. As a heads up, I think this place is going to be substantially quieter than communities on Reddit for some time, but my goal isn't to foster a ton of activity, it's to foster a community.

Community List

There's a number of communities on this instance available to join. Mind you, a lot of them are quiet and probably will be if/until more folks join. If you have suggestions for more locations I should add, drop a comment.

DC

• Washington, DC: !washington_dc@dmv.social

VA

• Virginia (state-wide): !virginia@dmv.social
• Northern Virginia: !nova@dmv.social

• Arlington: !arlington_va@dmv.social
• Alexandria: !alexandria_va@dmv.social
• Fairfax County: !fairfaxcounty_va@dmv.social
• Loudoun County: !loudouncounty_va@dmv.social
• Prince William County: !princewilliamcounty_va@dmv.social

MD

• Maryland (state-wide): !maryland@dmv.social
• Baltimore: !baltimore@dmv.social
• Montgomery County: !montgomerycounty_md@dmv.social
• Prince George's County: !princegeorgescounty_md@dmv.social

WV

• Jefferson County !jeffersoncounty_wv@dmv.social

Other

• Meta - Where most news/announcements will go !meta@dmv.social
• Chat - General chatter that doesn't fit anywhere !chat@dmv.social
• Introductions - Say hi! !introductions@dmv.social

Fediverse Tips

Joining a Community

If you're on the https://dmv.social instance, go to https://dmv.social/communities and click "Subscribe" next to any community you're interested in.

If you're on another instance, like https://lemmy.world or https://beehaw.org, this gets a little complicated but bear with me:

1. Go to https://dmv.social/communities
2. Click the name of the community you want to join
3. Go to the sidebar, and find the blurb of text like: You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !communityname@dmv.social
4. Copy the !communityname@dmv.social to your clipboard
5. Go to your Lemmy instance, and click the Search icon (magnifying glass) in the top right
6. Ensure your search type is set to All and paste the !communityname@dmv.social to the search box and click "Search"
7. Click the community name in the search results, then click "Subscribe"

If you're on kbin.social: Go to the Search box, and instead of the !communityname@dmv.social, replace the ! with a @. For example, !chat@dmv.social will need to be typed into kbin.social as @chat@dmv.social

Mobile Apps (Lemmy)

Right now the mobile app scene for Lemmy is still in it's early phases, so don't expect an Apollo/RIF experience right now. That said, here's a few I'm tracking:

• Jerboa - Android - https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa - Google Play Store
• Memmy - iOS - https://github.com/gkasdorf/memmy - iOS Testflight Group
• MLem - iOS - https://github.com/buresdv/Mlem - iOS Testflight Group

Need further assistance?

• Join the dmv.social Lemmy Support Discord for assistance. Yes, "I've never heard of this, how do I even make an account on this thing?!" is valid. (note: this is a support only Discord server)
• Send a private message to @dmvsocial@dmv.social
• Send an email: : !support at this site's domain

Hi everyone!

On Saturday, June 17th this instance may be unavailable intermittently through the day.

This will be due to tasks affecting the server and network configuration. These changes are being made to ensure this instance is better positioned for potential future traffic and stability.

Hi folks,

An issue with receiving account verification emails has been found and is currently being worked on. This should be fixed in a day or so. Most accounts requesting access have been approved.

Almost all accounts so far have been approved in 1-2 hours, so you should be able to try logging in after those 1-2 hours.

If you do not have access after 12 hours, your account was not approved.

-----

EDIT: June 14 @ 9:45am: This should be resolved. If you are unable to see emails, check your spam folder.

As of today, the current languages supported on this Lemmy instance are:

• Undetermined
• English

This is strictly because I'm only an English speaker. If this instance gains popularity and there are folks who are willing to help moderate in other languages, I'd be more than happy to open up the language list.

Ensure that you have configured your user settings to receive posts in the supported languages above in order to see all content on dmv.social. If you don't have both selected, you will be unable to view all content.

--- Updates

2023-07-11: Add disclaimer about fixing language settings

Lemmy's UI seems a bit unintuitive so I'll try to explain some things. So let's get started by walking through how to:

1. Create an account
2. Find a community to join
3. Reading a Post
4. Add a comment on an existing post
5. Create a post in a community
6. Other Gotchas I've Found

Create an Account

At the top right, click "Sign Up".

!

Now pick a username (this can't be changed!), give your email if you want to be able to reset your password, and write a short thing about what you like about the area. This is to help keep the bots at bay.

!

Find a Community

There are two types of communities to join: Local and Federated. Local communities are hosted on this server, Federated communities are hosted on other servers.

Joining a Local Community

To find a local community on this instance, click the "Communities" button at top

!

Now a list shows up with the local communities, how many users, posts, and comments are in each. For this exercise, lets join the !introductions community. Click "Introductions"

!

Now click "Subscribe" on the right side. !

Creating a Post

Navigate to the !introductions community from earlier, on the right side, click "Create Post" !

Now fill in a title and content. If you want to share a link, you can paste in a URL to the URL field, give a title for the post, and write a blurb about the link. !

Adding a Comment

If you navigate to the !internal_testing community, I have created a Testing thread. Click the "Testing Thread" link.

After the post contents you should see a text above other people's comments. You can write text for your comment, then click "Post" to submit.

!

Other Gotchas

Issue: Unable to navigate/click links Workaround: It seems if any input fields have been modified, Lemmy won't let you navigate. Refreshing the page appears to make things work.

Hi Folks!

This post will stay updated to note the federation policy of this instance.

Generally speaking, the federation policy is open and ideally want to maintain this stance. We wish to allow open access to communities that operate at least closely to the Community Guidelines. I believe this to be the policy that's easiest to deal with.

Instances and communities may be added to the blocklist if:

• it primarily hosts NSFW content
• the instance primarily hosts pornography or community contains and allows of pornography
• it generally contains illegal content or content that could be reasonably deemed as pushing the bounds of legality
• the moderation and userbase are very politically motivated
• a host to trolling, bigotry, and/or intentionally offensive content
• Causes a severely undue burden of moderation
• it is hacked, breached, or used for spam

---

Justification

Hosting this server is a part-time operation and my concerns are two-fold:

1. Due to how federation works, I believe someone could argue that content federated from other communities may count as this server hosting the content.

2. This is a part-time operation with a limited number of community members helping out and flamewars/internet fights suck to mediate.

---

Appeals

If an instance or community is removed, you may appeal in @support@dmvsocial@dmv.social and all will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Instances and communities removed for being hacked, breached, or spam will be allowed after the admins/mods rectify the situation.

As mod tooling improves for Lemmy, we may be able to revisit former instance/community removals.

---- Updates: 2023-July-11: Added link to Community Guidelines; Added justification; Added appeals section;

I've just launched dmv.social, a Lemmy community for us to chat about the area around DC, Maryland, and Virginia!

Joining DMV.Social is easy. Create an account, wait for admin approval, and you're in! We're excited to have you. Be sure to introduce yourself in !introductions.

Why are you running this?

I'm concerned about the direction of another popular link-aggregation site online but have greatly enjoyed meeting up with and chatting with folks in the area for the last few years. I'd like to help run a spot online to keep the local communities going.

Why do accounts require Admin Approval?

Primarily because I don't want bot-spam and on the off-chance this gets popular, I need to ensure the server is able to keep up with load. There are limited resources to run this instance at the moment so I'd be open to finding volunteers to help out in the near future.

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. Worst case scenario, in the future I might put up a "tip jar" or something but I don't want to think about that yet.

Can I create a community here?

Absolutely! This is a general purpose instance, so create a community for anything you like -- your town, a hobby, anything as long as it follows the rules.

How can I find communities?

There are two kinds of communities you can join: Local communities hosted on this instance and Federated communities hosted on other instances.

To keep it simple, if you just want to talk to folks around the area, look at this list: https://dmv.social/communities and click "Subscribe" to the communities that interest you.

If you want to branch out to communities hosted on other instances, things get a little complicated, so bear with me:

First, you want to go to another Lemmy server's community. You can browse a server like Beehaw or use a community search tool like: Lemmyverse or https://browse.feddit.de/

When you open a community, you'll see on it's sidebar:

> You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !community@server.org"

Do the following:

1. Copy the "!community@server.org" to your clipboard
2. Come back to dmv.social, click the "Search" button at the top right.
3. Paste the "!community@server.org" into the "Search..." box
4. Click "Search", wait a few seconds
5. Click the community's name, you should see posts
6. Click "Subscribe".