Just a reminder that “Mastodon” is the software, not the specific service provider. Mastodon.sdf.org is different from, say, Mastodon.social even though they run the same software.

If you haven’t already, you should contact the admin for that instance with your concerns. The contact the site lists is mastodon@mastodon.sdf.org

I think this may be related to this bug.

Yeah looks like a lot of single-user instances have seen a similar huge surge in user accounts. Here is a link to one of the discussions on the topic: https://lemm.ee/post/177673

Are you aware that your instance is currently home to nearly 20,000 users, while still only reporting just 2 posts? From the outside looking in your instance looks like the current home of a spam bot farm waiting to happen.

Most of those users seem to have joined in the past 2 days. https://fedidb.org/network/instance/lemmy.elest.io

This is a good question. I don’t think it is currently possible. However, I do think it’s probably a good idea for the developers to think now (if they haven’t already) about what happens to communities hosted on an instance if that instance is shutdown.

All of the posts and comments from that community from before the shutdown may already exist locally, but would local users even be able to keep using it? If not, might there be a way for the local instance to “adopt” a defunct community?