i made a lemmy account before i found out about kbin, and i'm so glad i found kbin. lemmy worked alright, but it seemed like a very unfinished product. the UI gave me the same feeling that the "new" reddit design does (overly mobile-oriented), which is why i'm so so so happy that kbin's UI seems to be overly desktop-focused.
bonus points for kbin (and i don't know if these are intentional or just coincidences that i'm overthinking):
comment scores are subtly pushed to the right of the box, which seems like a great anti-bandwagoning design choice. this way, the immediate focus is on the content of the comment instead of an arbitrary score based on what everyone else thinks of it. less voting prejudice!
you gotta scroll all the way to the bottom (i think? or maybe i just don't know how to use the site) to get to the "add comment" input field. maybe this will make people read more of the ongoing talk before contributing with their own points
anyway, happy to be here! let's make it an amazing place
I'm only using this on mobile but yeah same thoughts, only things I want to change that I like about reddit are unlimited scrolling, search by magazine, post or user and collapsing comment tress but this is all in time, also I want to hide user avatars.
There's other quality of life improvements such as speed, how media is handled but mainly these will change with time and money, I donated $5 and will donate more as I see progression but I think @ernest is really on to something here, much better than lemmy and if the population can grow we can get some nice communities on here and be something similar to but better than reddit.
Just curious but how did you get kbin to work on mobile, are you just browsing through a mobile browser? I like many others am new here and typical use mobile to browse.
I've been doing some browsing through just my normal mobile web browser and it works fine. Tried doing the PWA option, but it doesn't seem to respect screen orientation settings so I've just stuck with browser.
Not involved in development or this conversation till now, but I just signed up and while I was doing so, the kbin.social welcome page mentioned mobile apps are in the works but not yet available.
Not the person you replied to, but I don't think there's a mobile app yet. I've been using the page on my phone's browser and it's been pretty good so far.
i made the browser window really small on desktop and it reverts to the mobile stylesheet (which shows the kbin burger menu top left) follow above^^ steps from there
Yeah, I don't want anything to do with a platform that gives harbor to Russia apologists. I am anti-war myself, but forcing Ukrainians to submit to genocide is such a vile and reprehensible take from anyone that claims to value life and liberty.
In order: I heard about Lemmy, I heard its owners were awful, I read about reddit shutting down the Kbin transition community, and chose to make a Kbin account within minutes of seeing that news.
I have a feeling a lot of people will have had similar experiences.
Many people don't want to leave Reddit (or any major community) to use the alternatives because every alternative starts out trying to let everyone have a voice, no matter how repugnant, and ends up being filled with fascists. The good users leave in disgust while the fascists gather more fascists, until the prevailing opinion of the masses is "I don't want to use that site, it's nothing but fascists." This either kills the site or, if the owners are okay with it, turns it into something like Voat, which no self-respecting person would want to use.
Whether you agree or disagree with them, or with the belief that they should be allowed a voice on every platform and in every community, it is undeniably bad for any service they congregate on. It's your decision if you want to open your table to fascists, but it's everyone else's decision to not sit at your table because of it.
I can't find it anymore, so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt, but last week they had a post explaining that they considered criticism of the Chinese government racism and a bannable offense.
It's a little more than just not banning people who like Stalin.
Lemmy as a software may be fine, if forked and maintained by someone else, but for now I think it's best to avoid the software in general, or barring that, at least the lemmy.ml (et al) instance.
Ironically that is exactly how those folks read to me. Pseudo intellectuals that grew up in America and have a pretty rosy and tainted view of how living under authoritarian regimes they purport to support is.
Having traveled to communist and socialist countries and met MANY people both living in those countries and some that managed to escape (and many that don’t want to for various reasons), many of the people I have met would call those folks out if given the freedom.
It’s why I only lasted a few days on that platform too. Given these are the devs of the entire kit, yeah….I don’t see how it’s not going to implode.
Having traveled to communist and socialist countries and met MANY people both living in those countries and some that managed to escape (and many that don’t want to for various reasons), many of the people I have met would call those folks out if given the freedom.
Which countries have you traveled that are socialist? One might argue a lot of European countries have socialist views. I'd appreciate if you can be more specific and describe what type of views they hold.
Vietnam, Armenia, Azerbaijan, belarus, Lithuania. In Armenia I met and drank with many Iranians as well. Though I cannot go to Iran.
I also grew up in a Cuban household. Many of my friends had family still in Cuba and most of the community surrounding me being Cuban during my formative years.
That's fascinting, those countries are relatively unknown for most people. I'm glad you had the experience to go to those places I'm sure you met a lot of great people. I only know some vietnamese people and they have generally good views about their country and their future. Amazing people and amazing food btw.
Absolutely agree on Vietnam. Was one of the best times I have ever had.
Talks on politics in those places can’t be done in public. One of the things about Vietnam is it’s partially free market where if you get big enough you can become a Joint Stock Company. But mainly for the very large companies like Vin, Viettel (which is government). Often if you are smaller and get to large, bad luck can happen.
Interestingly many of the younger folks I met were much more interested in the west and western culture. There were the folks going to Starbucks. And some of the fast food like Jollibe is for kids. Many of the older folks are much less interested in the west.
One of the families I was visiting was fairly well off. They even had central AC. But the government, decided to build a new housing and park development and told him they were acquiring his house. He’s still unsure if they are even going to pay him for the land/house and if so, what. Yet and still though, he would never leave.
The actual government assistance for many is not survivable through. So you often see people selling lottery tickets and the like.
@effingjoe I'm not replying to you, but to Wally. It would be weird to say that stuff if they live in China for example. Also it brings further context. These two devs are hiding behind to images of Fidel Castro and Mao headers and stuff, while they are entitled to it, but it doesn't mean people won't catch up to things.
Oh you turned on the mastodon-like "tag everyone in the thread" feature. It's obvious now but for some reason I didn't notice you weren't replying to me directly. Sorry about that.
@effingjoe That's fine. I appreciate the info you've contrabuted. It's nice seeing other people engaging. It's kind of irritating seeing so many people being complacent just because they happen to be "in the left". But it's the internet, so what does one expect.
@davorb That's an unfair reading. The issue is that they use their position to build the tankie community and are pushing their narrative. That Russia is vindicated, that the genocide of the Uighurs isn't happening, antisemetism, that Jens Stoltenberg and NATO are nazis trying to take down the communists, even though Jens himself is a Social democrat and was attacked by a nazi terrorist by a giant bomb followed by a mass shooting of children and teenagers that were confined on a small island where they had summer camp for the youth party under the same party banner as Jens, who was the stateminister at the time.
This is the type of controversy (Not to forget the unprofessionalism) that is just going to destroy the Lemmy project and its reputation, resulting over time into making it very difficult to collaborate much.
Kbin and for example lotide don't have these issues, making it an easy switch, particurarly as Kbin seems to have much better growth than Lemmy now and the software even seems to work better.
Ugh. I hate putting myself in the position to be interpreted as playing apologetics fortthe tankies - seriously, fuck the tankies and the nazbols - but conflating the use of the software with the creators politics isn't a winning stance. Not when people have been using Reddit for the last decade, which has been propped up over the years by the likes of Peter Thiel and more recently Tencet.
The tankies are denying China's genocides right along side the major investors in Reddit, and the nazbols want the same as the actual Nazi billionaire that lifted Reddit into prominence, only under a different logo.
There's no reason to avoid the software, really. And there are good sites using it.
I'm not so much avoiding the software as I'm avoiding the users. I'm no more interested in joining an internet community with a weird amount of communists than I am in joining an internet community with a weird amount of white supremacists.
The problem I have is they put their politics in the software. In the instances they manage. In the hardcoded slur filter (that they did acquiesce and make available to disable) and even in their documentation and statements.
Frankly anyone that goes to the software is swiftly going to find out their stances and it’s going to be, at best, a lightning rod for opinions and judgements.
So as an individual I find it very hard to reconcile supporting them in any way by advocating for the software, participating in it’s development or running an instance given all of the above. Especially when there are perfectly serviceable alternatives that don’t have such baggage.
I expect Lemmy will get forked at some point soon. I'm still using both, because it's good to have options and redundancy. Especially when dealing with an open protocol, having multiple implementations helps keep the protocol from developing a bunch of ad-hoc proprietary extensions.
I am not so sure calling Peter Thiel a nazi is productive. Maybe i am ignorant but i havent seen anything that indicates that he is a nazi.
Ultimately, Peter Thiel and Tencent funding reddit didnt affect reddit's content in any way. These groups own a very small percentage of the site and neither of them administrates the site.
I am not familiar with lemmy but it seems that the administrators are tankies and popular posts are supporting tankie ideology. That creates a specific vibe that attracts specific people, i am not one of them.
It's like voat. I dont know what voat admins thought but when i went to voat, i saw nazi/white supremacist posts on the frontpage, so i wanted to leave as fast as possible. Btw i dont subscribe to the school of thought that tankies are as bad as nazis but i do think tankies are bad.
Ultimately, it's a vibe check. Something which reddit has been failing for 10+ years. I was on reddit for 14+ years and i saw it changing a lot during those years. I have been wanting to leave reddit for years but there was no good alternative and this api change just gave me the last push that i needed.
This is the type of controversy (Not to forget the unprofessionalism) that is just going to destroy the Lemmy project and its reputation, resulting over time into making it very difficult to collaborate much
100% agree, it's really going to hamper people leaving reddit when they see that one of the alternatives is associated with that mess.
If we take as a given that the original Lemmy developers are bad people, then even if the infrastructure they created is apolitical, using and popularizing it gives them soft power and visibility. And even if there are other instances run by good people, the original developers run the instance that most curious new people would start by looking at. That gives them the power to direct attention and traffic towards places that they or their friends control
Please educate yourself on Tankies. They're a bunch of fascist genocide apologists that are quite literally as bad as Nazis. Similar hateful ideology, just as fascist, same tactics of mass genocide, and they believe they are morally correct in anything they do because they're anti-Capitalism and anti-Western nations.
It's a little more than "liking Stalin". Genocide is merely a means to an end in an effort to establish a Socialist nation and as long as it is helping progress towards a Socialist state then it is morally correct to do so in their world view.
Tiananmen Square massacre? Never happened - that's Western propaganda.
The Uyghur genocide? Not a genocide - the Uyghur are religious extremists and deserve to be imprisoned. Please stop listening to Western propaganda.
Holodomor? More Western propaganda that never happened.
Hong Kong? They need to stop being children and accept that Hong Kong is part of China. The protests are anti-China propaganda being paid for by the US and Britain to make China look bad.
Russia is defending itself from Ukraine aggression and like always - Western nations are quick to interfere and turn it into anti-Russia propaganda.
"Quite literally as bad as the Nazis" is a bit hyperbolic.
Not at all defending their stance at all. It's just that being as bad as the Nazis is a really high bar, and by being that bombastic you risk distancing people who might otherwise be open to your arguments.
I personally don't think the term fascism is applicable either, but that's being pedantic. You don't need to be fascist to be awful - you just need to be awful to be a fascist.
Assuming they are indeed denying or in favour of the Uyghur genocide (i never saw the original post, but I'm assuming it's true), that is really everything anyone should need to know.
Tankies always seem to get a pass due to ignorance. People are better informed about Nazi Germany but significantly less so about The Great Leap Forward (Maoist policies) and the USSR (Stalin/Marxist-Leninist policies).
Let's play a fun little game of "Which genocidal fascists is worse?" to see how hyperbolic I was being. Shall we?!
Nazis: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000,000 people. Deny a genocide ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holocaust). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. These concentration camps began in 1933 and ended in 1945 lasting for a period of 12~ years. Had a secret police known as the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) whose job it was largely to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the Nazi party. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Tankies: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths an estimated 26,000,000 people. Deny multiple different genocides ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holodomor being the most well known). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. This Gulag network of death prisons began in 1919 and only ended after Stalin's death in 1953 lasting for a period of 34~ years. Had a secret police known as the Чека (Cheka) whose job it was to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the State. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky … let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible..."
You see - the difference between modern day "Communists" and Tankies is that Communists will look at all the terrible atrocities of the USSR and say "That wasn't real Communism." because they want to distance themselves from the atrocities committed. Meanwhile Tankies will say "All of that was according to plan. Some suffering will need to occur during the transitional period to become a true utopian society. If 100,000,000 people must die before a utopia can exist then 100,000,000 people will die. We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country."
So yes - Tankies are quite literally as bad as Nazis. I'd even argue they're worse if you want to go purely by numbers and how creatively the Cheka were in their ways of torturing people when compared to the Gestapo.
“At Odessa, the Cheka tied White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces or tanks of boiling water; in Kharkiv, scalpings and hand-flayings were commonplace: the skin was peeled off victims’ hands to produce ‘gloves’; the Voronezh Cheka rolled naked people around in barrels studded internally with nails; victims were crucified or stoned to death at Dnipropetrovsk; the Cheka at Kremenchuk impaled members of the clergy and buried alive rebelling peasants; in Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the winter streets until they became living ice statues; in Kiev, Chinese Cheka detachments placed rats in iron tubes sealed at one end with wire netting and the other placed against the body of a prisoner, with the tubes being heated until the rats gnawed through the victim’s body in an effort to escape.”[4] (Leggett, George (1986); pp 197-198)
I think ignorance is the common theme. I don't expect that everyone is an expert of capitalism, Marxism, Dengism, Leninism, etc. I think ultimately opinions are opinions and hope that we can think critically about what's right or wrong but most importantly learn to listen other opinion and debate appropriately. There's no absolutes and no real objectivity when talking about socioeconomic and political issues.
I actually agree with you on this in the most broad of interpretations. It's genuinely important to listen to people and try to see from their viewpoint even if you still disagree with them. The ability to have an open-discussion is important in being able to make progress or compromise.
But I've listened to enough Neo-Nazis and Tankies in my life though and have made up my mind on them and their ideologies. I don't particularly give a shit what either one has to say about much of anything and if you've listened to one ideologue you've listened to all of them because they all regurgitate the same small playbook of 5-6 talking points.
But the wooden doors! Alexa, how long does it take to cremate a body? What direct order to murder Jews? There was always a period of famine every 6-7 years in Ukraine! The greedy kulaks were responsible for the mass famine because they refused to sell their grain to the State and wanted to strong-arm the State into paying a higher price for their grain. What direct order to kill the kulaks?.
Not all ideas are equal. Some aren't worth entertaining and others are even worth condemning in their entirety.
Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user's profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F
I went to join lemmygrad as I consider myself pretty far left leaning. The stickied post said that they think the DPRK should own all of Korea. That's all I needed to know to know why I don't agree with their ideologies.
Stalinists are literally as bad as Nazis. Being as bad as the Nazis is a high bar, and they reached it. Stalin callously killed millions of innocents, and neo-Stalinists celebrate him for doing so.
Yeah, you're right, communists killed vastly more people than the Nazis, and their overall ideology is just as wicked. It's a shame they never received the same damning reputation. Too many of them twisting the narrative in entertainment and education for that to happen I suppose.
One unfortunate thing is that it's not really the communist ideology that's so awful. I think it's been proven to not be particularly well founded at this point, but Marx never envisioned a dictatorship. It's just been used as an excuse for bog-standard authoritarianism so much over the years that the whole concept has become tainted.
It's also important to distinguish between Marxism and Communism.
Communism neither started nor ended with Marx, and Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao are all theorists as well as practitioners. I guess the ml in lemmy.ml might be for marxist leninist.
Communism is inherently more about communitarian ownership, and leninism is basically an excuse why you still need a strongman on top of said communitarianism. Trotsky among others wrote about how the end justifies the means, which did not end well for him when Stalin put it to practice.
Indeed. I was oversimplifying, Marx is just the best-known "founder" of communist philosophy and even though I think most of it's kind of hogwash I still feel a little bad for him about how horribly it got misappropriated and turned into an excuse for history's worst atrocities.
One interesting thing is to visit war and post-war museums. In both Berlin and Budapest it is shown how the Soviets straight up took over the Nazi buildings and employed the same methods to control the people. Sometimes even the same people continued business as usual, just changing employer.
CalcKey is another microblogging platform (Like Mastodon or Twitter) but it has a lot of extra features. It federates directly with any other activity pub app, so you can follow people on Mastodon from CalcKey and vice-versa.
For a very over-simplified explanation - think of it as the same thing as Mastodon but with a different interface. If you're curious, you really just have to sign up and play around with a couple to see what you like. Or just go with Mastodon if you want something more tried-and-true.
As to how CalcKey relates to Lemmy and Kbin - they all can interact with eachother to some extent, but they don't all have the exact same feature set. Think of it this way: Imagine if reddit, instagram, facebook, and twitter could all interact with eachother. For example, you might be able to see twitter posts from facebook, but that twitter post might look a little more plain or be formatted differently on the facebook side. Or similarly, Facebook doesn't have the concept of a downvote, so if you viewed a Reddit post from Facebook, you wouldn't see any downvotes. The same is true for viewing a Kbin post from CalcKey or Mastodon.
What you really need to know: Don't worry too much about all the in-depth details of federation. Yes, these sites can all interact with eachother, but realistically you'll want different apps for different things.
Here are some popular fediverse alternatives to big name sites:
Reddit: Kbin, Lemmy
Twitter: Mastodon, MissKey, CalcKey, Pleroma or dozens of others
Instagram: Pixelfed
Facebook: Friendica
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I actually joined lemmy.ml when it first started. I knew the devs were tankies even then, but I didn't care.
However, when communism.lemmy.ml (now lemmygrad.ml) started federating with the main instance and flooding !all with posts about Russia and China, I just had to leave. At this point now however, it looks like normal people are the majority again.
Kbin supports post tags, which has been on my wish list for Lemmy from the beginning. Still, I like the Lemmy UI better.
I have an account on both but if I had my preference I'd say kbin is the winner. I've been on reddit since 2011 and this reminds me of how it felt to join reddit back then
The UI on kbin is awful I can't even tell what I'm doing on the mobile site. The desktop site infinitely loops the cloudflare thing lol. Never even seen it.
UI is a subjective thing. I like the kbin interface so far. To your 2nd point, they have an incredible influx of users the past week or two. I'm sure what you're running into is server loading issues. Hopefully it will improve.
Are there any themes on Lemmy instances? The mobile pages tend to default to a dark theme on my phone but default to a white theme on my desktop with no option to change it. At least on Kbin, I can have a dark theme.
Maybe it’s on a per-server basis, but when I was playing around with Lemmy I found some options to choose between a light and dark theme. I think it’s also set to your system’s settings by default. So if your phone is always in dark mode you’ll see that, and then your desktop may load the light version.
As in bounced off, how? As far as I could tell at least on their mobile site, deleting an account doesn't even seem like an option they offer.
I've jumped on the train to try it out and didn't think too much of it other than having a kind of vanity-looking domain in your user account, but yeah, reading more into them definitely has me trying to get rid of it.
I just deleted my account. On the desktop it was under the account settings and was the last option on the page. I never got any kind of confirmation, but when I reloaded the account page all it gave me was a 404: deleted error.
I have issue for people who don't listen to other peoples opinion and label all people as genocide deniers or CCP shills. Believe me it happens a lot in reddit and I hope kbin can be better in this aspect. I believe Chinese people knows much much better about their own country than many of us growing and learning western-focused history (i don't even think such obvious thing is controversial). I give the benefit of the doubt people who are critical to the government and listen to their opinions. But sometimes it's obvious when people argue in bad faith. I have generally a positive views about China but at the same time I can be critical of many things about it. I think that's a healthy way to engage and discuss.
I think people generally agree with the premise of your first sentence, but this is a discussion of actual tankies and the participants are providing citations to back up the assertions. It is neither projection or dog-whistling. To put things in perspective, your comment is the equivalent encouraging patience and understanding when people are voicing their disapproval of people who are promoting neo nazi propaganda.
Some philosophies do not warrant engagement with an open mind because their core tenants are rooted in bad faith and are anchored in absolutist moral superiority. I agree that the reader should never take such accusations at face value and verify that the citations check out, but again, the accusations are well-founded in this instance.
Ultra-nationalists are bad. It does not matter whether they are Chinese ultra-nationalists, American ultra-nationalists, or others. Do not cede oxygen in the room to them, because they will consume all of it.
You are right and I like the way you put it. I think what I said might not be completely related to the subject but still wanted to point out something I've been thinking for a while. And most importantly cite your sources people if you want to be taken seriously!
Right now I'm finding that Lemmy has more "generalist" communities spread across various instances, whereas the bulk of magazines seem to focus on tech interests at the moment. Nothing wrong with that (I'm here for a reason!), but right now it feels like Lemmy presents more opportunity for discussion on topics other than Reddit or tech or gaming or whatnot. Maybe that's because Lemmy has been around longer--or at least that's my understanding, but I'm new to both platforms so I'm not sure.
On the flip side, kbin has a much more attractive interface, and it feels like there's a lot of potential here. It's still a little janky, as is Lemmy, but the interface probably feels more familiar to the average Reddit migrant.
Keep in mind that once the hug-of-death dissipates, federation will be re-enabled and you can subscribe to Lemmy communities from KBin. You can do that right now if you go to a different Kbin instance. The owner of this instance had to set up a traffic management layer via cloudflare that is causing trouble with federation at the moment.
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