Reddit Migration

FaceDeer, in Ordinary redditors are feeling the pain as well.
FaceDeer avatar

To some degree it's hard to be sympathetic, because the people complaining about this are seriously lacking in sympathy themselves. They just wanted to see the content that those users produced for them, they didn't care about the difficulties or preferences of the users themselves. So when those Spez-opposed users took their ball and went home the Spez-friendly people got angry at them for taking their comments away with them rather than at Spez for having driven them to that in the first place.

sethadam1,
sethadam1 avatar

Nailed it. Nicely summarized.

Sarsaparilla,
Sarsaparilla avatar

Exactly. My sympathies are with those creators & moderators who have received awful comments from reddit users that are too naive and impatient to understand the protest actions.

sadreality,

Too stupid understand who butters their buns also...

OpenStars,
OpenStars avatar

They seem to assume that new mommies & daddies mods & content creators will rise up to take their place. Like all that effort grows on trees or something.

awsamation,
awsamation avatar

Exactly.

Most of us on the fediverse can sympathize with the idea that "its really frustrating not being able to use Reddit as a reliable spurce for obscure knowledge."

The difference is that we feel "its really frustrating that I can't rely on Reddit, because even if the answer is there I can't in good conscience support spez." Instead of "all the answers are gone because of these stipid protests."

Baylahoo,

Yes exactly. What’s the root cause? The good info is gone. Why is the good info gone? The people making it were pushed beyond their limits. Why were they pushed to far? Spez wants to make reddit publicly profitable (sure that’s not crazy by itself). Now we split up the next level. Either he wants reddit to live on foreverish and be self sustained or he wants to go public and dip the hell out of there. Going public is clearly bad when it is entirely valuable based on voluntary work and user based content. Fuck over all of the value and it’s not about keeping reddit alive foreverish, it’s about going public and fucking off. Whoever gets stuck with the bag when corporate dips is screwed.

RemembertheApollo,

Very much the truth. I cautiously suggested that people leave their content up simply as an archive of useful knowledge, but fbfw was downvoted to oblivion. I understand people wanting to depart and take their ball home with them because fuck you spez, but I still have a hard time with the destruction of the knowledge base.

brianshatchet,

Same here. I've left all my posts and comments up on Reddit. I'm sure it's made it's way in some form to Bard or ChatGPT. Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.

The loss of /r/homeautomation has set me back a week at least with respect to home maintenance. The loss of knowledge is crazy.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.

But wouldn't directing redditors to the fediverse to get their answers (specifically like "Content moved due to reddit's stance on ... link to this answer is at https://kbin.social/m/...") be better?

Just never know when some information would be helpful in a pinch, especially if it's tech or programming related.

That's exactly why we need to work on rebuilding it in the fediverse. The danger with reddit is that this info would have always been lost no matter what. Because of central control a mod could hide it. A reddit admin could outright delete it. The ceo has edited comments before. Why should we trust that our content will be safe with him?

keegomatic,
keegomatic avatar

Funny you mention /r/homeautomation, I’m in the same boat. Pro tip, though: if you found the Reddit result using Google, you can always look at the cached content.

If you’re on mobile, first open the search results page as the “desktop” version (for some reason it’s not an option in the mobile view). If you’re or after you’ve done that, click the three dots next to the result. When the modal pops up, click the dropdown arrow under “More options” at the top. Then click “Cached”.

Voilà. Read post and comments despite it being private/in protest.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

That's why I'm advocating so hard that for people who delete their content, not to rely on PDS for this - see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/71867/Poll-Power-Delete-Suite-users-are-you-saving-your-content - but to use tools that save their content - https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/65260/PSA-Here-s-exactly-what-to-do-if-you-hit-the . The knowledge base shouldn't be destroyed - but neither should it be under the control of reddit.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Instead of "all the answers are gone because of these stipid protests."

I could it as a win either way. If they're frustrated with reddit, they leave, and engagement goes down.

iamsgod, (edited )

yup. if they deally care, they would either join or make the content themselves, yet they do neither and make it about mods

mochi,
mochi avatar

Are kbin or Lemmy posts being indexed by search engines? If the content was created, would anyone be able to find it?

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

If we build it, they will come.

HidingCat,

I think Kbin isn't, because of bandwidth/CPU concerns.

tal,
tal avatar

Shows up in site searches on Google, as the other response points out.

I don't know about the update frequency.

mochi,
mochi avatar

To clarify, I meant posts on kbin/Lemmy, so that someone would land on kbin/Lemmy when searching for things, like people do now with Reddit.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

FWIW, when i go to duckduckgo and search for "site:kbin.social google fediverse" I get a couple of good results, such as https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/t/2/What-is-the-Fediverse and https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/14974/Will-searching-the-Fediverse-like-Google-ever-become-possible

There's quite a bit of noise as well atm but i figure this will get better as we get more content on the fediverse and more stuff gets indexed.

eliz,
Kichae,

People love to blame the victim for defending themselves over the problematic person who is abusing them, because if they acknowledge that someone is being abusive that kind of morally obligates them to step in.

And they very much don't want to do that.

And obviously the exploitation of users for their knowledge and content so that the owners of Reddit Inc. can gain wealth for sitting on their thumbs is different from the kind of abuse one's mind might go to when the word is raised, but it's the same dynamic.

Someone is claiming mistreatment, those around them are annoyed by the claims, not by the mistreatment, because the person standing up for themselves is putting onlookers in the dangerous position of examining their relationship to that mistreatment.

And they don't wanna.

RavenFellBlade,

Vicious, but true. I'm still struggling with whether or not I'm going to astroturf my comment history and delete my account. I see a lot of folks saying their comments were restored and then they had no way to log back in to delete them again. For now, I'm just going to leave my Reddit account dormant. I suppose it isn't super effective to leave my content there for Spez to benefit from, but I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it. All around, this is just a ridiculously stupid situation we all find ourselves in over the whims of small minds chasing after big money. Again.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Personally, I'm leaving my comments intact because I doubt that Spez is really going to benefit much from them in the long run anyway.The technology behind AIs currently seems to be moving away from simply throwing vast amounts of data into the training to a more precisely fine-tuned high-quality training dataset, so there's probably not going to be as much demand for Reddit's trove as Spez thinks.

And besides, the old PushShift archives are still floating around. We don't know how the legal or technical situation will shake out but maybe people will be able to use that for free training.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

I'm leaving my comments intact because I doubt that Spez is really going to benefit much from them in the long run anyway
The technology behind AIs

I think rather than AI the idea is to reduce ad revenue by moving content off of reddit so folks will stop checking reddit and thus reddit has fewer ads seen.

Kichae,

The question is, does Reddit ownership believe the money is in LLM training data or not. We've seen tech leadership jump on all kinds of bandwagons in the last few years, none of which have panned out. I don't think LLMs will, either, but every time one of these things gains some limelight, someone with an established tech company seems to believe they're about to make a lot of money.

And in this case, they actually might. Just not off of the tech, but off of an IPO where they centre the tech as the opportunity for new investors.

But I have no idea if they're smart enough to see the scam and run the play, or if they're true believers or not.

OpenStars,
OpenStars avatar

May I say that whatever you decide to do, you've already "won" this? First, giving a shit about people, and second, spending time grappling with those truthfully complex issues has enriched you, and all of us.

One suggestion is to edit them with wording like fuck spez, so that if he deletes your content it won't be you that yanked it away from people.

But they could just revert that easily enough, rather than delete outright (although are they smart enough to do that...?). Another could be to insert an explanation at the top or bottom of all your (best/all) stuff that you do not condone Reddit's actions but decided not to punish end-users for the actions of that powermod abuser.

And eventually you could migrate it elsewhere but yeah, that's a bit hard to do atm when users would have trouble finding it. OR, you could combine these approaches: for each answer, make a post to kbin/lemmy about the issue, then edit the original to include solely a link to that new location. That would kill 2 birds with 1 stone by helping people realize where to go for high-quality content, while providing the direct answer (there's no need to create an account or deal with fediverse issues, anyone at all can just read it). (The down-side is that spez could easily revert that back too, but if so then you could keep trying, like spell out the link to futz with its automated detection.)

But whatever you end up doing, I see that you are doing it because you care, and that's already a win in my book. :-)

Raji_Lev,
Raji_Lev avatar

Same. I don't begrudge the people who want to salt and burn their Reddit history, but I'm leaving my old posts up for anybody who might be helped by them (plus most of them are just shitposts anyways)

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

I'm leaving my old posts up for anybody who might be helped by them

You could move them here and link from reddit - folks still get the help but reddit still loses ad revenue overall (as word-of-mouth and search engines slowly start to repoint others in need to the fediverse instead of reddit)

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

I'm still struggling with whether or not I'm going to astroturf my comment history
I kinda feel like it does more harm to people just looking for answers than it ever will to Spez if I were to remove it

Here's what I recommend to have the best of both worlds, while still taking advantage of mass editing tools.

Create a magazine or two on kbin specifically just to hold your content.

Copy it over and paste it into your mags.

Mass edit your content on reddit with the usual message, but also include a link to your kbin profile. Folks who want to see the useful content can still find it that way.

Jaluvshuskies,
@Jaluvshuskies@lemmy.world avatar

Is this the ultimate move? Kbin magazine = reddit post, right? What community do you plan to post it in?

For example, I have a few game-specific guides. I was going to just post them over at Games.lemmy or whatever games is the most popular, with the game in the title, since game-specific communities haven’t seemed to migrate over - specifically, Vindictus, Control, and Outriders (which I’ve written guides on)

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Is this the ultimate move?

That's how I see it.

Kbin magazine = reddit post, right?

Kbin magazine = reddit subreddit = lemmy community
Kbin article = reddit post

What community do you plan to post it in?

Mostly I've made my own - but only because most of my content were in niche subs that I haven't found equivalents for here yet.

since game-specific communities haven’t seemed to migrate over

Posting in the generic game magazine makes sense. I didn't have this option if I did I would have used it.

Cryst,

I think if people aren’t getting answers from reddit they are more likely to look elsewhere. I do haven’t deleted my comments 🙃 yet…

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

I think if people aren’t getting answers from reddit they are more likely to look elsewhere.

Exactly! That's why it's so important to save our content before removing it from reddit, so we can put those answers elsewhere - like the fediverse - which can help spread adoption of it.

bnuuy,

i do not like what reddit is doing one bit, but please stop. what reddit is doing is not anywhere near equivalent to real actual abuse, and implying it is is a little offensive. have some perspective

Thorned_Rose, (edited )
Thorned_Rose avatar

I totally hear you that comments like this can feel insensitive of people who have been abused. I'm an abuse survivor so I get where you're coming from and appreciate your intent.

What I disagree with is that we shouldn't make this comparison at all. The same relational dynamics and structures that give rise to mental, emotional, physical, sexual, etc. abuse and exploitation give rise to this behaviour too.

It's like the pyramid of rape culture (https://www.11thprincipleconsent.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Rape-Culture-v5.png). The stuff at the bottom isn't one for one equal to what's up the top. But the underlying structure and foundations are the same no matter how far up you go.

The same as any form of abuse, no matter how big or small, is underpinned by the same thought patterns, behaviours, power dynamics, culture, societal attitudes and practices, etc.

EDIT: removed preview of pyramid so no one gets smacked in the face with unpleasant descriptions scrolling down. Typos.

Strangle,

It’s just a stupid website

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

I think it's the behaviour of a certain ceo and that ceo's apologists on said website that's at issue, here..

sour,
sour avatar

what about that

Pandoras_Can_Opener,
@Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz avatar

as somebody who has several decades of parental abuse to look back on I don’t consider this offensive. on the contrary. spez and reddit follow many entries of the emotional abuse playbook to a t.

Kichae, (edited )

I've been abused. I suffer from ongoing complex PTSD from that abuse.

I have some fucking perspective, thank you very fucking much.

And that perspective is that the word is broadly defined, and that exploitation is fucking abuse. It's not physical abuse, no, and I didn't say that it was. I'm fact, I was very careful to avoid such comparisons. But exploiting people for their time and labour so that you can generate obscene amounts of wealth for yourself is exploitative, it involves lying to people, both implicitly and explicitly, and it involves engaging in emotional and psychological manipulation.

And that's a type of fucking abuse. It's the exact same type of abuse that narcissists inflict on their victims. It's just being done in a way that the law and our culture sees as legitimate, because there's a lot of money involved, and we all fall under the yolk of rich mother fuckers who think they deserve more from us, just because they already have money.

I make the comparisons not because I lack perspective, but because I have it.

Because corporate behaviour like this feels too fucking familiar, given that perspective.

penguinsAreRapists,
@penguinsAreRapists@lemmy.world avatar

I also have complex PTSD (it doesn't seem like there's many of us) and I 100% agree with this

penguinsAreRapists,
@penguinsAreRapists@lemmy.world avatar

I also have complex PTSD (it doesn’t seem like there’s many of us) and I 100% agree with this

lucidwielder,

Tbh - some of us, like me, did leave our most valuable comments to the tech community behind. Whether it helps reddit or not I still posted things to help others. I did delete much of anything outside of very tech related subreddits though. Also I promoted some software I wrote when applicable so it would only cut off my own nose to try and spite Spez too, so no I would rather not do that.

Reddit will die a slow death I am sure, but the heart of reddit is certainly gone.

djmarcone,

Yeah I didnt delete anything either, but if people don't go back that's what will really affect reddit in the long run. They can sit on their precious marketable content but if it stagnates it won't be worth squat after a while.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

but if it stagnates it won't be worth squat after a while.

That might be true (but some content remains valuable after long periods of time too, think of all the good stories and classics from the turn of the 19th century for example), but even so, for those who are able it might be better to move the content now and delay even that much to reddit. (Not everyone can do this, and even for those that do it's extra effort, unfortunately.)

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Also I promoted some software I wrote when applicable so it would only cut off my own nose to try and spite Spez too, so no I would rather not do that.

Yeah, that seems like a reasonable exception to the rule.

ColonelSanders,
ColonelSanders avatar

I posted a similar comment elsewhere but along the same line of thought: The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever. There's a real problem of Apathy in today's culture when people are just jonesing for their fix of daily content/memes, or at the very least nothing that disrupts the status quo. They don't give a fuck about "ideals" or what corporations do or farm from them so long as their instant gratification and daily intake of said content remains unchanged.

OpenStars,
OpenStars avatar

The most toxic users of Reddit want to stay there rather than come here? Oh boo-hoo, cry me a river:-). If they are happy with their childish toys, then let them be - that's a win for them, and a win for us too?

Okay, so that's glass-half-full thinking, and more realistically the situation is also half empty at the same time, but both are true at the same time, so we'll see what happens I guess.

Radiant_sir_radiant,

The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever.

I actually consider this to be (mostly) a good thing. Within those that walk away from reddit, I expect the ratio of content creators vs. content consumers to be way above average. So if we get most of the people who used to make Reddit a great source of food for thought, and spez gets to keep the vast majority of cat video watchers, that's not a bad deal at all.

Pandoras_Can_Opener,
@Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz avatar

classic divide and conquer strategy.

CurlyMoustache,
CurlyMoustache avatar

I've seen many toots on Mastodon where people argue it is ethical to mirror Reddit now because so many people are destroying their content, and that will make searching for answers more difficult. Sure, I get their stance but at the same time I think is being a selfish scab.

The content that is now lost, will bounce back on some other plattform. Hopefully a better and more democratic plattform.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

Reddit, Inc. gains nothing when people use mirrored or archived content.

lemmy_in,

So I haven't been on Reddit since the blackout, so I don't know what the sentiment there is. I used the official app, so you can't accuse me of not being sympathetic for the cause.

But I have been creating content for years, many of which contained helpful solutions for IT problems in niche areas I took interest in. Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private or the original question context was deleted. This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.

The 'npm left-pad incident' is a case where a developer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of open source library which many other libraries were dependent on.

There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process, rendering not only your content as useless, but other people's as well

abff08f4813c, (edited )
abff08f4813c avatar

Now all this content is unhelpful because the sub is private

You could try sending a modmail to see if the mod will give you access to the sub so you can see your own content, or send you a copy of a specific post or comment.

or the original question context was deleted.

One thing to note is that this happened all the time on reddit as folks either deleted their question and throwaway account as soon as they got their answer. Other times folks would ask with their main account but used something like shreddit once a month. So this isn't exactly new to the protest.

When I move my content to its new home, I usually avoid naming the questioner and I briefly summarize their question/responses. This way the content has the added context to be understandable.

If the post is from Feb of this year or older and you forgot the context but want to save the content, you can search for the post in the pushshift torrents - if it was deleted as part of the protest then the pushshift torrent will have the original content in it and you can restore the context that way.

This really bums me out that all this energy and effort has gone to waste.

Additional effort is required to do what I do, but the result is that the effort has not gone to waste, instead folks who want it can view it on the fediverse.

There is something to be said about abandoning and moving on without burning the bridges in the process,

From my POV reddit burned those bridges.

rendering not only your content as useless,

It's not useless, it now serves to move people away from reddit. Remember, with reddit you never know when you will be permabanned - it seems to happen entirely at random nowadays.

but other people's as well

Mostly I've only seen three categories of this.

  1. A throwaway or an account not logged into for a while. The owner if still alive probably doesn't have the access to move it away anymore anyways.

  2. Content that is still present under "[deleted]" - person got hit by a 1k limit or something and missed deleting that before deleting the account.

  3. Content from a mod, who has't moved off yet as they're trying to hold onto the sub for the protest.

I figure I'm better off moving my content with context anyways, since that prevents the person in 1. or 3. from coming back and confusing the context.

The other thing I do when commenting is quoting extensively, that way the context is clear from my own comments.

TehPers,

left-pad was a bit different in the sense that anyone could write it themselves, it’s just that the npm community adopted more of an “if it exists, let’s use it” mindset without thinking of the possibility that these dependencies can disappear suddenly. To be fair, I don’t have anything against using libraries where appropriate, I think they were just missing the guarantee that these libraries wouldn’t disappear suddenly on them.

With left-pad, its existence was valuable but the code used to create it really wasn’t that special. With Reddit, the information is valuable, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be hosted on Reddit. They’re flipped basically.

Nicenightforawalk,

I noticed this is in r/apple. It is now populated with hate filled spez apologists

sudo,

lol I have to imagine a lot of the people active in Apple are pretty used to eating corporate overlord’s assholes so that doesn’t really come as a surprise…

RemembertheApollo,

Leeches gonna leech I guess. Their free ride ended along with everyone else’s.

BlondieBuff,

I think we're all mourning the loss of community and information found on reddit. Being angry that spez has forced protesters into the position to dismantle these communities is a legitimate and understandable reaction.

I don't see in the above comment that this person is spez-friendly or getting angry at the protesters specifically, just acknowledging that the whole thing sucks for everyone.

abff08f4813c, in Fediverse won't replace Reddit as long as Lemmy is the main platform being promoted
abff08f4813c avatar

kbin is newer and less polished. But yeah I personally recommend kbin over lemmy for exactly the reasons you posted.

tbird83ii,

Also, the Kbin dev expressly stated he isn't ready for a massive migration, and the current influx has caused him no end of stress. We want to keep him around and not drive him insane.

BedSharkPal,

I would argue we also don't want to be in a place where we rely on any one individual. Thankfully @ernest seems to understand that as well.

ernest,
ernest avatar

I appreciate the concern, and it seems to me that kbin is no longer just one person ;) Currently, kbin is a team of wonderful people who handle development work, devops, project management, and more. Additionally, Piotr helps me with administering kbin.social. There will be significant changes here soon, things are happening quickly. But to be honest, I wasn't fully prepared for such substantial growth, and it will probably take some time before everything stabilizes. But... this is just the beginning ;) What's important is that the snowball starts rolling, regardless of whether kbin, Lemmy, or Mastodon gains the most users. We all win in this situation.

ferallettuce,

@ernest

@Fizzee @abff08f4813c @tbird83ii @BedSharkPal

Given that Kbin has more active users in the past month than any lemmy instance, I’m sure it’s been wild for you considering this was a side project.

ernest,
ernest avatar

Yeah, the pace is still crazy, but it's a completely different mental comfort when you're aware that you're not alone ;)

DracolaAdil,
DracolaAdil avatar

Yup, we are all with you dude!

Varwin,

Java Dev here if there’s anything I can contribute with a couple hours a week!

Pamasich,
Pamasich avatar

kbin is written in PHP, but if you want to contribute, it's opensource on codeberg.

metaStatic,

Java Dev

My condolences

joost,

r/ProgrammerHumor… Oh oops, old habit.

tjhart85,
tjhart85 avatar

We have an m/ProgrammerHumor !

metaStatic,

hashtags work in the fediverse

tal,
tal avatar

Kbin is PHP/Symfony, but people are writing tools in various languages, not to mention clients. I haven't looked at the client repositories, but I assume that some, if not all, of the codebases for them are Java.

Rayspekt,

And my axe!

HappySerf,
HappySerf avatar

Reddit really is here

Doggo,
Doggo avatar

Let me know if you need some more coffee!

;)

To everyone who may wish to, if you want to support ernest see below link.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

ElPussyKangaroo,

This is so frickin wholesome 😭

BEEKAYRANDEE,

The thing that helps Kbin the most is that it is, by far, the easiest to understand. Googling "Lemmy fediverse" gives a bunch of various links to other Lemmy instances, which are presented in a way as if they are separated from one another. Kbin appears as one site, one location for content aggregation. Although that "goes against the idea" of decentralization, most users are currently looking for their "one home to replace their old one home". The more users flock to one area and learn how it works, the more things will begin to take their proper shape, so to speak.

rideranton,
rideranton avatar

A feature we'll definitely want to have with kbin in the future is the ability to migrate accounts to other instances. That would mean that even though we're centralizing on kbin.social right now, people could move to other instances and spread the load across the fediverse without losing their history

BEEKAYRANDEE,

I'm still learning the ins and outs of this place and the others, but part of me thought that was the feature of being federated. User accounts could seamlessly transfer from one instance to another.

Looking further into it, it looks like that feature exists for content, but not so much for accounts.

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

I think it exists in Mastodon, it just hasn't been worked on yet for Kbin / lemmy.

tal,
tal avatar

You can access content from an account anywhere, but not migrate the account.

Steampunk,
Steampunk avatar

Love you, Ernest 💕

midas,

Wishing you the best of luck, hoping Kbin succeeds! It has everything to be a great platform for the long run.

hovster9,
hovster9 avatar

Don't become like those overlords. Stay down to Earth with the rest of humanity.

JungleGeorge24,
@JungleGeorge24@mastodon.online avatar
mariobarisa,
@mariobarisa@mastodon.social avatar

@ernest we must strive into making activity pub the new standard for social media

PlagueShip,

Kbin doesn't have the ability to sort comments by top. To me, that is the #1 most important feature, and not having it when it's easy to do shows some real ignorance. The reason I come to these sites is to see the best comments on news of the day.

EntasaurusWrecked,

@PlagueShip

@Fizzee @abff08f4813c
It’s new, it takes time… Reddit wasn’t Reddit at first, either

Briguy24,

12 years ago reddit would crash all the time. To make it worse they always told me I was the one who broke reddit personally by putting a message on my screen. My bad yall.

loobkoob,
loobkoob avatar

Yeah, I always thought it was a little unfair when it popped up telling me that "Briguy24 broke reddit!". But I never held it against you, don't worry :)

Stern,
Stern avatar

reddit used to not have comments or even subreddits (Among the first ones were r/programming and r/NSFW, fwiw).

MrGG,

Well good news, friend! Here is the kbin source code. Since it's so easy to do I look forward to seeing your pull request sometime today 😀

New_account,

Weird response. The vast majority of people switching over here are not programmers and don’t know how to update the source code to implement a new feature. The other guy never said it would be easy, but rather, that the feature is a critical one that’s missing.

tjhart85,
tjhart85 avatar

New_Account:
The other guy never said it would be easy

Plague_Ship:
and not having it when it's easy to do shows some real ignorance

So ... not only did they say that it was easy, they also insulted Ernest because the ALPHA software wasn't yet up to the lofty standards of Plague_Ship. I have to assume that when Ernest had a couple hundred people in here max, the issue just never came up. It's not ignorance, it's priorities.

ernest,
ernest avatar

Top sorting is already available on the testnet. It will be further improved over time.
https://lab2.kbin.pub/

Mozami,
Mozami avatar

Ignorance? Seriously?

Calcharger,
Calcharger avatar

@plagueship Just so you know, the main dev @ernest replied to your concern

holycrapwtfatheism,

To each their own but sometimes it's nice to just scroll through comments and see the varied replies instead of just fed the top/earliest on some posts. Imo it increases user engagement.

TelKaivokalma,
TelKaivokalma avatar

"..shows some real ignorance"?

Brother, acting like a douche to people who are working and paying for you to be here shows some real arrogance. You're not a customer here. There's no ad revenue, no data collection, no money. If you want it so bad then do it yourself. Beauty of the fediverse is you can go make your own instance that does what you want it to do.

olrik,
olrik avatar

"No money" well, there can be some if you donate to https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin as per the About page at the bottom of the page.

awsamation,
awsamation avatar

Even with the donations I doubt there's that much of a profit to being made. Servers are expensive, and there's no way that servers are the only overhead that ernest is dealing with.

Can_you_change_your_username,

His own knowledge, skills, abilities, and time are almost certainly worth more than he is receiving in donations. Dudes a skilled programmer/developer and is putting serious work into this. If he was putting his time and effort into freelance work instead he'd be building a heck of a nest egg.

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

There is a bar at the top of the feed where you can switch how your feed is shown.

artillect,
artillect avatar

Rome wasn't built in a day

patchw3rk,
patchw3rk avatar

@BestOf might be of interest. The community sifts through the junk to share the most insightful comments.

Entropywins,
Entropywins avatar

That's pretty lame friend

Crankpork,

Less polished, but the browsing experience is better and more customizable than any Lemmy instance I've been on so far.

Nahaelem,

Assuming we coalesce around Kbin, 5-6 years down the road when Kbin is a lot more polished and has a significant user-base,h ow do we prevent a repeat of Reddit?

It’s inherent in human nature to coalesce, to form a community, which ultimately creates a centralized hub that is ripe for control by a few people.

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Federation already solves this, mostly. If kbin.social disappeared, other places like kbin.cafe and kbin.lol would have copies of the magazines, so content wouldn't be lost. And the community could regroup under a new magazine.

The only issue is magazine portability - right now there doesn't seem to be a way to annoint an instance to be the new owner of a magazine that's hosted by the kbin.social instance. But maybe that technical problem will be solved in within the next five years.

Sigmatics,

That is one of the most important conceptual problems with the fediverse right now imho.

metaStatic,

my first non-reddit hit is kbin.pub which is probably worse than join-lemmy

abff08f4813c,
abff08f4813c avatar

Maybe kbin.pub should have a banner at top like "Got here by mistake? Maybe you just want to join an instance? Try ..." with .. being picked at random on each page load. Or we could have a featured kbin instance of the month or something...

unsophisticated, in PSA: while upvoting exists, to get the "move closer to the top" effect that reddit's upvote had, you need to click boost

Horrible idea. No one sees this button, no one knows what it does, and upvotes definitely should have that effect.

Calcharger,
Calcharger avatar

Ernest is likely working on it

fartsinger,

We talking P. Worrell or the developer guy?

Calcharger,
Calcharger avatar

Developer guy

Ashyr,

I'd give anything to have Ernest P. Worrell back and on the case.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

I somehow feel like any software he wrote wouldn't work very well.

discodoubloon,
discodoubloon avatar

He has to do a physical side-quest every time anything breaks.

DpwnShift,
DpwnShift avatar

Vern?

NetHandle,

But is he... earnestly working on it?

melroy,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

well he did fix the reputation calculations.. https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/462

pruwybn,
@pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Hopefully. I’ve heard being earnest is important.

OtakuAltair,

🔥✍️🔥

theodewere,
theodewere avatar

that would be disastrous, and just serve to make sure this platform ends up like reddit

PazuzusRevenge,

Agreed. I upvoted AND boosted your comment for redundancy.

Kichae,

They're not redundant functions. They're... Mixed up on kbin right now, because things were originally built with the up button boosting content, but that's incongruent with how Lemmy does it, so it was changed.

But boosting isn't really about sorting at all. It's about republishing content, so that it can be sent out to instances that have started following a group after the content was originally posted.

ShadowRam,

I believe it is more akin to 're-tweeting' for your followers.

All boosts you boost are not private and everyone can see everything you have boosted

Kichae, (edited )

How it's interpreted it is entirely up to the UI layer. On microblogs, it's surfaced as a retweet-like behaviour, but it's not surfaced at all here, really, except on kbin where it's used to report who has reboosted something.

At its core, it's a republish button, and just as if you were to republish someone else's blog post on your own blog, people can see, if they look closely enough, that you've done it.

artillect,
artillect avatar

If you follow someone on kbin, and they boost a thread, it'll show up in your feed. It's sorta like crossposting to your user page on reddit

Phlogiston,

This makes sense — but if nobody knows it there is lots of room for confusion.

“Boost” seems more like “updoot” than “retweet“. Perhaps more importantly why would one retweet a comment? Rather than a post?

Kichae,

Perhaps more importantly why would one retweet a comment? Rather than a post?

The way content propagation works here is that someone using Website A follows a remote content source (either a user, or a group -- aka a "community" or a "magazine"), and the remote hosting website (let's call it Website B) sends all subsequent content from that source to Website A, where the requesting user can then view it. If someone from Website A was already following that content source, then they get to see all of the content that Website A had already received, and benefit from earlier users efforts. But if that person was the first from Website A to subscribe to that content source, then they only get future content.

It's very similar to a, well, a magazine subscription in that way. NatGeo isn't sending you their 150 years worth of back catalogue when you subscribe in 2023 (not that you should bother subscribing to NatGeo in 2023).

The 'boost' button republishes content, though. Posts, comments, whatever. Hitting 'boost' on a comment republishes it, and once republished the group actor (the little bot-like construct that functionally is the group) sees it as new content, and pushes it out to everyone following it. This means it will reach websites that started subscribing to the group after the comment was originally posted.

Boosting is how older content (where older basically means "from anytime before literally right now") spreads through the fediverse.

AnarchistArtificer,

Thank you so much for this explanation, it really helped some of this click for me. I don’t use kbin, so the boosting isn’t so relevant to me, but I’m beginning to understand some of how the federation works together.

Kichae,

I'm not sure how Lemmy syncs and backfill, but under its hood, I imagine it's doing the same thing, just automatically. Lemmy groups are really spammy with boosts when viewed from Mastodon, for instance.

Sorchist,

So this is one of those things like git, where you can't explain how it works on the surface to a normal person because it barely even makes sense if you don't know about the underlying plumbing. :\

Not awesome, but I guess that's what you get when you graft a reddit-like experience onto a fediverse that was more or less invented for microblogging.

density,
density avatar

is following individuals a common thing on lemmy/kbin?

on reddit ti was possible but virtually nobody did it. all about the community not "influencers".

What I want to do is sho approval to the OP and make the post more likely to float to the attention of someone who will want it..

UnshavedYak,

Yea, i'm working on my own Fedi software and i'm struggling with the point of boosting in the link aggregator context. It's an odd overlap with Reddit-style reposting to appropriate subs, but based on the user.

It makes sense in the Twitter UX, but i struggle to find it's place in the Reddit UX.

luna,

I think boosts have potential to be used for crossposts, and the current implementation are just crossposts to your profile. Though they're likely here right now just because Kbin is a mix between thread and microblog software

RheingoldRiver,

yeahhhhhhh if boost came with like a menu: "Boost to: -Your Personal Microblog -Magazine's Microblog [pick] -Magazine as Article [pick]"

then the feature would be pretty baller

(actually im not sure if your personal microblog exists so...maybe just the other 2)

Kichae,

Boosting is super important in all contexts in the Fediverse.

When am instance subscribes to a content source - be that a user actor or a group actor - on behalf of a user, it only requests future content. Back catalogues are not fetched by default. Boosting re-publishes the content, so that it is received by new followers.

With a group actor, the boost triggers the actor to reboot the content itself, sending it out to new subscribers to the group, and filling in that back catalogue.

aidan,
aidan avatar

I like this comment but I don’t know what im supposed to do about it

Kichae,

Boost things.

blazera,
blazera avatar

if old content isnt fetched for a newly subscribed instance to see, how are users going to boost that content in the first place?

Kichae,

Users who can see the content need to boost it?

Users who use the website that the community is hosted on have access to the full library of it. They need to boost stuff. And people who subscribe from remote sites need to boost older content that they've seen.

blazera,
blazera avatar

but relevant users cant see it, its never fetched for them to see it. Sure users on the home instance can see it, but they're on the home instance, it's already fetched for them. Ive run into this problem on here, where there is a lot of content on other instances that isnt visible from kbin. I have the option of visiting the home instance to see it, but it takes me completely off of kbin, I cant boost it from that page.

Kichae,

Someone just needs to follow. The community owner either needs to seed the community to big instances using accounts on them, or people who find the community via other instances need to subscribe and know that fresh content will come. Then they can boost older content from the hosting site.

Things take some conscious effort here. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

blazera,
blazera avatar

"Then they can boost older content from the hosting site." No that's the problem. Like you yourself said back catalogues arent fetched. They can't see the older content to be able to boost it, they'll only see new content.

Kichae,

If my instance follows a community at time t = T, and your instance starts following it at time t = T+10, I can boost content posted between T and T+9 so that you can see it.

Meanwhile, if people on the hosting instance boost things posted from times earlier than T, we both get to see them. Then, once they're visible to us, we can continue to boost them for new instances to see.

Johngi,

If boosting is meant to be a solution to the back catalogue problem, then it's a horrible way to do it. You'd have to go through and boost every single post from before the hosting instance was followed, and then it'd only show up the user page of the guy who went to all of that effort? (or, realistically, bot).

If what I'm saying is accurate (and I'm still not sure because this is admittedly a bit too complicated for me) then it doesn't sound very useful since individual profiles aren't nearly as important in a forum context when compared to something like twitter, and especially when you can just upvote something and have that show on your profile. Unless I'm mistaken and anything you've upvoted doesn't propagate to another automatically instance while boosts do... but I don't think that's a big enough distinction to have two different buttons? You could just have an upvote also do that.

Kichae,

then it'd only show up the user page of the guy who went to all of that effort?

Where are you getting that impression from?

IronDonkey,

This seems needlessly convoluted.

Kichae,

This is why the functionality was hidden behind the upvote button initially, but people wanted the arrows to match the arrows on Lemmy.

FaceDeer,
FaceDeer avatar

I see it as similar to the "save" function on Reddit, except it's public. I've started using it on things that I think I might like to read again later (and so by extension anyone who's "like me" would probably want to read it too).

Kichae,

Should they? It seems to me that we should have way, way more control over how we choose to sort things.

That should be one of the options, of course, but we can have so much more here.

TwistedTurtle,

I literally do not see this boost button anywhere. I just spent 2 minutes mousing over every button around your comment and I cannot find it.

artillect,
artillect avatar

Boosting is only available on kbin

Nim,

I second this. It should be a simpler UX

DougHolland,

"Boost" comes across as a bug, not a feature. People should have one vote, not two.

theodewere, (edited )
theodewere avatar

i disagree, it's a great functionality that people should learn.. and here's the simple point.. you can BOOST a comment you disagree with, so that your argument AGAINST the comment will get more visibility.. reddit is dysfunctional, and this mechanism can help fix one of the problems reddit cannot get rid of.. this mechanism can help discussion, and fight against things like brigading..

think about it a minute.. someone makes a really TERRIBLE point that you can dismantle easily.. tear it down, and BOOST the hell out of it.. reddit cannot accommodate that.. keeping those two functions separate is critical..

this will help keep every thread from becoming a popularity contest that is entirely predictable, once people figure it out

edit to add: i've only been using this platform for a few days.. but i promise you, it works the way it's supposed to.. try it out..

islandmonkeee, in 3rd party app for Reddit, Boost, is still functioning well after July 1st
islandmonkeee avatar

The thing is that it really is no longer about 3rd party apps working or not, rather, the level of disrespect displayed from Reddit towards us, their userbase. That's why I'm not going back.

AlecSadler,

Exactly. Relay user here and it'll continue to function but...

  1. Fuck spez
  2. I don't care to support reddit anymore
  3. Reddit's content for my feed is already turning to garbage. I'm already finding kbin and lemmy better.

Good riddins.

Oshka,
Oshka avatar

Exactly this. There is now actual conversarion and I'm finding interesting content again.

Anomalous_Llama,

I’m struggling to find as much interesting content as I did on Reddit. BUT I am much more easily finding pleasant conversations. And that I think is more important.

I’m posting more here than I did on Reddit because I want to be the change I want! Also I’m still learning to navigate this place too. I like it though.

TravelsInObscurity,

The bots posted most of the interesting content in Reddit, and it’s unhealthy to have a constant stream of “interesting” content to browse through. For the time being, this seems much more organic content, and there is actually a bottom to hit in terms of content which makes me want to do something besides endlessly scroll.

ToastyBanana,

I agree 100%. It became too stimulating, and with Memmy I don’t have this addicted feeling of having to browse for hours and hours, but I still find some cool stuff when I open the app

Oshka,
Oshka avatar

I'm having a different experience with the content but can understand where you are coming from. I spent a lot of time searching out the niche communities I'm interested in and subscribing across all the instances i can find. Trying to actually post more too and encourage others.

The conversation aspect is so true though. It's been the most present surprise and is part of what's driving me to engage and start posting.

GataZapata,

Nr. 3 is the main point. I prefer less content if it's not reposts, ragebait and bots

islandmonkeee,
islandmonkeee avatar

And TikTok reposts. I was getting fed up of them on /r/StupidFood....

ginerel,
ginerel avatar

I was a RedReader user for quite a while (as in years). While being a bit spartan, I found it to be the best Reddit app for my preferences. Period.

But indeed, nowadays, there is actual (great) content on Lemmy and Kbin, and I am willing to get to it. Not much time left for Reddit. Sorry, spez, fuck you!

ClassyDave,

Good riddance?

meldroc,

Exactly. Even if spez rolled everything back, I'm not going back.

All trust in Reddit is now destroyed because of Spez.

Scott,
Scott avatar

Fact is even if Reddit rolled back the changes it’d be the classic “let’s see how far we can push our user base then we’ll roll that back to acceptable levels while slowly pushing those limits through later updates” strategy

conciselyverbose,

Give Apollo a contract guaranteeing free API access until the end of time without nonsense restrictions on content and maybe I'd think about it. Short of that I'm all set.

(No it's not just Apollo. But he's the most wronged and the one I use.)

EvilMonkeySlayer,

His name is Steve Huffman, using Spez means he gets to avoid a lot of the public criticism through google searches etc.

Bendersmember,
Bendersmember avatar

After the whole Brock turner the rapist crusade (deserved) I've been sitting here scratching my head why spez wasn't named and shamed with his real name by the same group.

aeternum,

Did I mention, "fuck spez"?

Iwasherefirst,

Same. I used to use the official app because when I started using Reddit, I was not aware of third party apps. Then it was just inertia. After this fiasco started, I started trying various apps and used sync for the last 3 weeks. Now i'm here.

nepenthes,

LJ (Sync dev) said he'd look at Kbin after he gets Sync for Lemmy up :)

const_void,

Yep. Fuck Reddit. It's fallen to the normies now. I'm glad to have my tech nerd discussions and news here in the fediverse now.

TThor,

Reddit has made clear they have no respect for their users, especially their most active users responsible for creating and moderating their content. No matter what reddit does or doesn't do now, it is obvious it will continue to get worse.

IninewCrow,
IninewCrow avatar

It's also a wake up call to those who created content and did tons of free moderating for no gain other than personal prestige ... it is making us all realize that whenever we put in extra effort into a social media website that is privately owned - we create the content and reason for the sites existence but we don't financially benefit from it, someone else does who did no work to create any of it other than to claim ownership over everything.

It's the same old story from a thousand years ago or even the arguments of worker rights from the 1800s ... we create the means of production but we receive no benefit from our work

Bendersmember,
Bendersmember avatar

Little late to the game on this one but I did finally get my words to reflect how and why I feel I do about this situation, I commented it recently on another post but I'm gonna drop it here again as I hope it can add to this discussion.

I quit when rif went down. I've never used an official app, desktop site, mobile site etc. Rif was Reddit to me for 10 years. Maybe leaving as a collective will make some difference, maybe not, but I'm going to start being more firm on how much I'll let companies try to push me around expecting me to just take it. They built it on our backs, then just took it away so a literal select few can cash in, when they are already filthy rich and had other options.

I've been explaining it to others as if you broke your phone. Now it's frustrating getting used to a new phone, but it has lots of new features you never even thought of that make up for the inconveniences. Sure I could go back to my old phone, it's comfortable to use, but the screen is broken and it cuts me now and again, and over time it'll cut me more often. I'd rather get used to the new phone.

This past year I've dealt with food going up, gas, utilities, rent, hell cigarettes and even beer, my fishing license went up. Every single nook and cranny they can pull a cent from you they will.
I'm done choosing to let them. If they want my data, my attention, my content, they can pull it from my cold dead hands damnit.

Ok weird ass Braveheart speech over and out.