Yes and yes.
You can have multiple communities with the same name in different instances, and not necessarily about the same subject.
You can also have not only the same display name as multiple other users, but even the same username, if not in the same instance.
I don’t think it is a payment issue. At least in Brazil (where I live), a registration (which can be done directly with the .br registrar, not necessarily third parties) costs less than 10 USD a year.
vlemmy.net was registered less than 2 months ago, for 5 years. I suppose (hope) it was already paid for 5 years.
it’s strange that it’s parked at a dynamic dns service though
That makes sense. I’m a reddit refugee, just recently joined. Should have checked the domain registration date. I suppose there will be a lot of new instances dying or not being properly maintened in the near future.
Edit: when I couldn’t access vlemmy.net, I signed up to feddit.nl. Just checked the domain registration date; June 1st 2023. Bummer.
Could be a dns server malfunctioning (or rather misconfiguration).
After all, “it’s always DNS”
Well, not being owned by a profit-driven evil stab-us-in-the-back company going IPO has advantages and disadvantages :-(
It seems dynu.com is a dynamic dns service. Was vlemmy.net running from a variable IP (dhcp) address? Is that usual for lemmy instances?
Really weird.
dynu.com is a dynamic dns service. I don’t think the maintainer of vlemmy.net would be running the instance from a dhcp (variable) IP, to justify using dynamic dns.
Or is it usual for people to run instances from their homes using common ISP subscriber variable IP addresses?
Even more strange that it was registered just last month, according to whois. Is vlemmy.net that new?
I signed up for it just a few days ago (reddit refugee), it was working until earlier today.
I’ve just signed up at feddit.nl now, to be able to post this.
Since his acquisition shenanigans started, I felt like that was like a spoiled billionaire kid who didn’t get the reverence he thought he deserved from a waiter, then proceeded to buy the restauran chain just to close it.