tldr: dmv.social is closing on April 14th. Going forward, the instance will be read-only until the termination date. I apologize for the short notice, but I am setting this read-only to prevent abuse.

I set up a Matrix space for the heck of it in case I decide to open things up again: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

What do I do?

If you are a dmv.social user, consider signing up for another instance. A few that I like include:

• https://lemmy.world
• https://beehaw.org
• https://literature.cafe
• https://sh.itjust.works
• https://lemmy.zip

If you go to your Profile on the website, there should be a link to export your subscription list. You may import this list to other instances. Do note that some instances aren't federated with everyone, and instances have varying SFW/NSFW policies.

If you wish to start a community for anywhere in the DMV area: I will create a post on the big communities here to help spread the word. Send a private message to @dmvsocial@dmv.social by March 23. I will compile a big post on all of the major communities here after March 23 linking to alternative communities.

If you are a server host where dmv.social communities have federated to: I have locked all posts and communities. You should not have to worry about spam. Feel free to delete the communities after April 14th.

Thank You.

I've received about a half dozen unsolicited "thank you" DMs over the last few months. Genuinely, the unsolicited "thank you"s have been uplifting.

To the few users on this instance: thank you for making this instance your home on the Threadiverse the past several months. I've received a few private messages thanking me for running this and providing a SFW-gateway to the Threadiverse, so I hope I reasonably delivered up until this point.

To everyone else: Thanks for the upvotes, the downvotes, the subscribes, occasional comments, and lurking :)

Will you be back?

Maybe. If this does return, I want to give it 6-12 months. If you're interested about this returning, bookmark https://dmv.social and check back in 6 months. In the mean time, I'll post an update to the Matrix space: https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

I still want to provide a federated social network for this area, I'm just not really confident now is the right time.

OK, cut the b-s: Why?

I want to make a few things abundantly clear so there's no unnecessary speculation:

1. This was not a financial decision. The server hosting costs were $55/mo, which were extremely easy to manage.

2. This was not done because dmv.social is still on the smaller/still-growing side. I've spent years building communities elsewhere, anyone would be unreasonable to expect something to take off in less than a year.

3. I'm not playing the blame-game and putting this on the Lemmy devs. They seem like busy folks and I appreciate that releases have been pretty damn seamless from a server-administration side.

4. This was done entirely because of my concerns about being a server host on the Fediverse. 99.9999% of Fediverse folks are wonderful people. The remaining 0.0001% are urinating in the pool, so to speak.

I've been weighing this decision for the last 2-3 weeks. I wanted to build a mod bot to get ahead of the malicious images problem other hosts had since I didn't want that crap coming here. Common sense eventually kicked in, and I realized that the risk of liability just isn't something I want to deal with.

Last year, a few other instances had malicious images posted. The admins and mods of the communities were quick to remove it and explain what was going on, but that was a huge wake-up call that "wow... this is... dangerous."

A few months later, this seemed to happen again.

Now fast forward to several days ago, there was the incident on Mastodon where someone tried to shut down Content Nation by sending CSAM their way.. This event was pretty much the final straw with my confidence level in the Fediverse and the risk of images.

Quite frankly, this is disturbing and I just don't want to deal with the possibility of this crap.

This behavior on the Fediverse is extremely problematic and I can't be the only server host where this isn't sitting right.

Anyways, I can ramble on more but I've typed enough.

Hey folks!

For those on Matrix wanting somewhere else to lurk or for dmv.social support, a Matrix space is now available!

https://matrix.to/#/#dmvsocial:matrix.org

The space is currently hosted on matrix.org though this may change in the future.

The Discord server will still remain available for support-only purposes.

Hi folks!

It sounds like there's a few issues with Lemmy that've been reported the last few days. When 0.19.1 is available, I'll upgrade as soon as I can.

Some issues to note:

Federation may be spotty to other instances in some cases: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4288

Fetching an unseen community won't get the 10 most recent posts anymore: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4283

Increased server load (the instance has felt a little slower than usual): https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4282

I'm deploying a tweak for the last one momentarily.

dmv.social may be unavailable from 4pm ET to around 6pm ET, tomorrow, Saturday, December 16th for a Lemmy upgrade.

This is to install Lemmy 0.19.0 ~~and migrate a database for Pictrs, the image hosting server.~~

POTENTIAL IMPACT: This WILL log you out of your sessions across Lemmy and your apps. If you lost your password for whatever reason, the sidebar has contact methods for support.

I waiting until tomorrow for other instances to migrate first in case there are any quirks ;)

This will bring a lot of really neat features to Lemmy:

1. Improved Post Ranking - The new "Scaled" sort should prioritize smaller communities around Lemmy. Small communities, like a lot of the ones here, might start getting a little more visibility :)

2. Instance Blocks for Users - If a particular instance bothers you, it's now possible to block from your user account. (Note, this doesn't change the federation policy of this server)

3. Remote Follow - You can now browse other Lemmy instances to find communities then get bounced back to dmv.social to actually follow, versus the currently annoying way of searching and refreshing several times.

4. Improved speed on page pagination, so things should feel snappier.

5. User data export/import - If you decide to switch instances elsewhere, you can now download a copy of your subscriptions and blocklists and import it to another server so you don't have to do much work to re-create an account.

Full Lemmy 0.19.0 release notes

Lastly, this instance doesn't ask for donations and doesn't plan to. If you're itching to give support in some way, consider a donation to the Lemmy devs: https://join-lemmy.org/donate

dmv.social runs Lemmy, a forum software that allows you to access communities regardless of the server you're on (in most cases).

While dmv.social focuses on hosting communities pertinent to DC, MD, and VA, many other Lemmy servers exist that host content that span a wide range of hobbies and interests. Your dmv.social account lets you access these communities.

The instructions below will walk you through a few ways to find and join communities.

Lemmy is still a bit rough around the edges, so this process may be a little difficult. If you need help, reach out for support via the methods in the sidebar.

Local Communities

dmv.social hosts a number of communities for various regions around the DC-MD-VA area, as well as local interests.

1. Click the Communities link
2. Click the "Local" tab
3. Browse around and click "Subscribe" for anything that interests you.

Communities Other dmv.social Users Use

Other users on dmv.social have already subscribed to some communities on other Lemmy instances. These can provide a good starting point to finding something you're interested in.

1. Click the Communities link
2. Click the "All" tab
3. Browse around and click "Subscribe" for anything that interests you.

Please note, communities with 0 subscribers may only have a few posts or very old posts. This is expected. dmv.social only downloads posts from communities with at least 1 subscriber.

Communities similar to Subreddits

sub.rehab contains a list of communities that may have content similar to various subreddits.

1. Let's set our home instance to dmv.social by going to the sub.rehab Settings
2. Set "Home Instance" to "Enabled"
3. Click the Instance dropdown and select custom
4. In the Custom Instance text box, type dmv.social/c/
5. Now search for communities. Make sure you only select "lemmy" and "kbin" for the service type.
6. Click any community to load it on dmv.social. If an error comes up, refresh the page since it may take a few seconds to download posts in the background.
7. Click Subscribe on the right side.

Communities on other Lemmy Servers (the easy way!)

A few Lemmy search engines exist that list communities across all Lemmy instances. Below will contain instructions to use a few services we like.

lemmyverse.net

lemmyverse.net shows a lot of communities with a basic search and count of subscribers/posts.

1. Go to lemmyverse.net communities
2. Click the "Home" icon on the top right
3. Click "Select a Home Instance" and type dmv.social
4. Search for communities using the bar on the top left.
5. Click any community to load it on dmv.social. If an error comes up, refresh the page since it may take a few seconds to download posts in the background.
6. Click Subscribe on the right side.

Communities on other Lemmy Servers (for advanced users!)

Right now the flow to find and join communities hosted elsewhere is very, very rough. Please consider using a method above. This process is for if you already know of another Lemmy instance and want to join a community hosted elsewhere.

Some popular servers include:

• lemmy.world
• beehaw.org
• lemm.ee

First, let's walk you through finding a community:

1. Go to a Lemmy instance
2. Click on the Communities link at the top of the page
3. Click the "Local" tab
4. Search using the search box for words about the topic you're interested in.
5. Click the community name to view it.

Now let's walk you through joining:

1. On the sidebar of the community, look for text saying 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:
2. Copy the "!community@server.org" to your clipboard
3. Come back to dmv.social, click the "Search" button at the top right.
4. Paste the "!community@server.org" into the "Search..." box
5. Click Search, wait a few seconds. If nothing comes up, click Search a few times, it may take a few moments to download content from the community.
6. Click the community's name, you should see posts
7. Click "Subscribe".

Sorry folks!

Earlier this morning dmv.social was inaccessible due to an expired SSL certificate. During the migration last month I misconfigured the certificate renewal process. The issue is now resolved.

Hey folks!

As suggested in a request thread, !dmvbeer@dmv.social has been created to talk about beers and breweries around DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

I'll be cross-posting this to the !washington_dc@dmv.social, !maryland@dmv.social, !virginia@dmv.social communities as well to promote it.

dmv.social will be down at 10pm ET for approximately 1 hour for maintenance.

Hey folks!

dmv.social will be going down on Friday, October 6th from 10:00pm ET to 12:00am for a migration to a dedicated server.

It's starting to make more sense to move the server off of a VPS and onto to an inexpensive dedicated server as the storage needs increase. As a bonus, the instance gets more RAM and CPU, though I doubt this will have much of an impact given the small instance size.

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 is focused on 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](/c/communityname@dmv.social)
4. Copy the [!communityname@dmv.social](/c/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](/c/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](/c/communityname@dmv.social), replace the ! with a @. For example, [!chat@dmv.social](/c/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: :

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.

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;

Welcome to dmv.social, a Lemmy community for folks in and around the DC, Maryland, Virginia to chat and participate in Lemmy!

Don't have an account yet? Joining should be easy. Sign up here and try to log in a few hours later or the following day. If you get an error, it means your account hasn't been approved yet and you'll need to try again later -- this is only done to ensure there aren't any bots.

Be sure to introduce yourself in !introductions.

Why are you running this?

An open internet can be a good thing. I think it's important to have a site for locals to discuss and chat. As major social media sites work to become more profitable post-pandemic, I've become increasingly concerned with the direction they are going. I've had a lot of fun meeting folks on other sites in the area and participating in local discussions, so I'm hoping to foster an environment for that on federated social media.

Why do accounts require Admin Approval?

I don't want to host spam bots.

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 if we do a meetup in the future. If this instance is at risk of being shut down due to financial reasons, I'll post about it well in advance, but hosting costs are fairly minimal for a server that'll handle quite a number of users for a long time into the future.

Can I create a community here?

Absolutely! Right now the process is by request because I am hesitant to open the process up due to Lemmy's limited administration/moderation tools, but I'm fairly open to almost anything as long as it's SFW and doesn't promote hatred. Request the community in !support@dmv.social.

How can I find communities?

Check out the how-to guide