Why we need to move on from kbin.social

smokinjoe, 10 months ago

It hasn't even been two weeks. Let people get used to the platforms.

Difference instances are showing up slowly, so maybe instead of saying everyone needs to split up before communities and magazines have had a chance to mature even in the slightest, we slow down a little bit and support the hosts and developers we have now.

Or perhaps, look for new instances and report back on places folks can migrate to.

guyman, 10 months ago

This is the most rationale response. A lot of people suffering from mental illness will bog themselves down in theory and never focus on the practically of what they're saying. This is one of those examples. Just be glad people are using the platform and let it grow organically. If you're convincing users "they're doing it wrong", they're just going to give the finger and probably leave. What's great about decentralization is we, as individuals, can choose how we use it. If you want a big server? Join one. If you want a small one? Join one. It really is that simple. Try to ignore people who tell you otherwise.

Kaldo, 10 months ago

Well said. I'm also hoping we eventually get a tool to migrate accounts from one instance to another (or maybe link accounts from multiple sites so they show as combined data together). That way I don't lose everything if the instance I go to just shuts down one day, who h did happen to Mastodon often in the beginning iirc.

ryan, 10 months ago

It's right to say that instances are showing up slowly, but there is definitely a centralization occurring. According to fediverse.observer, kbin.social has 43k users, and the next most populated instance in the US only has 104 users.

Ernest, developer of kbin and who runs kbin.social, has spoken about the difficulties in running kbin.social with the spike in users. If people are willing to sign up on smaller instances or migrate over, that could help distribute the load.

Or, like me, learn about VPSs and domain names and Linux commands from zero knowledge to get their own instance stood up - but it took a bit and I'm still running into issues here, so I can't necessarily recommend it for someone who has a life to attend to. :)

lml, 10 months ago

Nice domain

champion, 10 months ago

tbh before reading your comment I had no idea that there are other kbin instances

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Thanks for your honesty because some people here are receiving this post like they should move to a new country.

smokinjoe, 10 months ago

Cool! I hadn't really known how to find other kbins! I'll scope them out and maybe try hopping on another one.

I guess it'd have been nice if OP had provided a list of alternatives people could become aware of.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Magazines having a chance to mature is going to lead to people being further entrenched on one instance.

VeeSilverball, 10 months ago

I believe there is a healthy relationship between instances and magazines, actually: the way in which topical forums tend to be "hive-mindy" fits well with Fediverse instance culture. The difference is that instead of Reddit-scaling leading in the direction of "locking down" topical discussion to be a bureaucratic game of dancing around every rule, because all users are homogenous - just a name, a score, and a post history - you can have "this board is primarily about this" but then allow in a dose of chaos, affording some privilege to the instance users who already have a set of norms and values in mind and pushing federated comments out of view as needed, where you know the userbases are destined to get into unproductive fights.

This also combats common influencer strategies applying bots and sockpuppeting, because you've already built in the premise of an elite space.

There's work needed on the moderation technology of #threadiverse software to achieve this kind of vision, but it's something that will definitely be learned as we go along.

smokinjoe, 10 months ago

If you use reddit as an example, they have hundreds, thousands of subreddits.

We aren't anywhere close to even a hundred nature magazines.

Allowing people to be comfortable for a month won't cause any long term damage.

AmidFuror, 10 months ago

100 nature magazines would get pretty niche.

livus, 10 months ago

Brb, just going to create m/aardvarks, m/african wild dogs, m/anteaters, m/antelopes, m/ants, m/armadillos...

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

You know who's uncomfortable? The person behind the scenes keeping the server afloat while you make yourself comfortable.

The real message here is that you're not going to move.

I didn't expect everyone to get the message, so you do you.

majkeli, 10 months ago

Has he requested this?

smokinjoe, 10 months ago

Jesus Christ, stop being such an abrasive jerk.

Ertebolle, 10 months ago

Can magazines migrate instances like users can? (even ignoring federation concerns, at some point it's going to be much easier to scale this thing if the more popular magazines can spawn off to their own instances)

llama, 10 months ago

No but once the magazine/community has been created it doesn’t really matter which instance it lives on because any user from any instance can post, comment and mod in that magazine.

Infiltrated_ad8271, 10 months ago

This will be something to regret when a community wants to avoid censorship or move before the closure of an instance.

llama, 10 months ago

If they want to “avoid censorship” (aka put things online they know others find offensive) then those instances should just never turn on federating from the beginning. Because then they cry afoul later when they can’t blast their messages to other instances anymore.

Ertebolle, 10 months ago

There’s all sorts of reasons to be nervous about federation - say you’re starting a community dedicated to Falun Gong or some other subject the Chinese government despises and are worried about moderators of larger instances coming under pressure to shut it down.

But yes, it does seem like the best way to manage that is to start it off on an instance you control from the get-go.

someguy3, 10 months ago

If you want to create a community, can you only create one in your instance?

llama, 10 months ago

Yes communities can only be created on the same instance as the user creating it. But, a user can have an account on more than one instance to create communities and then assign their main account on any instance as a mod.

Ertebolle, 10 months ago

Ah, didn't realize that.

So what happens if the instance it was originally created on goes offline, or defederates from the instance that you're on - does it disappear, or does it carry on as if nothing happened? What about if all of the mods' instances go offline?

llama, 10 months ago

If an instance goes offline (based one what recently happened with beehaw defederating some instances), other instances will still keep copies of old posts and comments, and any new comments on the old posts stay just on whatever instance made them and don’t copy to others.

Niello, 10 months ago

If this is implemented it'll be good for the communities to be able to go where they want, but there's a good chance it can become a source of drama if the net result is smaller communities choosing to migrate to larger instances.

Also, the logistic behind large magazines spawning their own instances only make sense if there's an option for users to subscribe to an entire instance. AFAIK that's impossible right now (or I don't know how to, if anyone know please tell me), so that is something to keep in mind.

Grimpen, 10 months ago

It’s an idea I’ve seen floated, and personally would appreciate, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no Magazine or Community migration for kbin or Lemmy.

Incidentally, I’m commenting from a Lemmy instance, to a kbin Magazine on kbin.social, and subscribing to RedditMigration on kbin.social was pretty seamless, at least as seamless as any other non-local Lemmy Community. OP is right in that spreading out is a decent idea. It’s not really necessary for everyone to be on the same instance.

Another way to address the problem of corporate takeover and ensuing enshitification is form non-profits, co-ops, or other organizations to actually “own” the instance. My home Mastodon instance has started down this path already.

Machinist3359, 10 months ago

I do wonder if it would be healthier for the fedditverse for instances to really narrow their magazine/community footprint. I.e. "This is an Anime instance" a "Science instance" etc. Making off-topic magazines could either be discouraged or outright banned.

Not looking forward to having dozens of "news" and "technology" magazines sharing the same stories,

Sigmatank, 10 months ago

This happened a good amount on mastodon and was very helpful. It’s part of why I’m on Midwest.social right now

someguy3, 10 months ago

That’s what I think too. There’s going to be a dozen gaming communities in their own instance and none will really take off. To get it going there needs to be one.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

You don't have to be on the gaming instance to participate in the gaming instance.

You can participate in the gaming magazine on kbin.social even though you have moved elsewhere.

jalda, 10 months ago

The person above wasn't talking about that. They were talking about fragmentation. For example, I am subscribed to three different Formula 1 communities/magazines, one in kbin.social, another in lemmy.ml and another in lemmy.world. There is no difference between them, other than the site they're hosted. I know that I can participate in all of them, and I have participated in all three. But I'm still unsure how should I participate. If I find an interesting article, should I post it only to one of them? To which one? Or crosspost it to all? (btw, lemmy has an option to crosspost, but kbin doesn't) And if the topic is posted in several communities, should I comment in one or in all of them? Maybe should I encourage people to migrate to the larger community? Or maybe we could solve the problem by creating a unified community!

deluxeparrot, 10 months ago

I initially shared your concern but I feel this is something that will sort itself out through time. Likely in a 'winner takes all' type of deal where the biggest one will eventually win.

You have three F1 communities cross posting mostly the same content, eventually you will get fed up of the duplication in your feed and unsubscribe from the one that is smallest or least unique. Other users will do the same and that effect will show in the search results for new users coming in. Eventually the biggest will win.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

The solution is to stop thinking that moving to a new instance means that you need to create these things all over again. You move your account to a smaller instance and then participate where you like.

someguy3, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

My point was there is going to be a lemmy.ca gaming community, a Lemmy.World gaming community, a Lemmy.ml gaming community, a beehaw.whatever gaming community, kbin.whatever gaming community, plus another dozen. It will be hard for any of them to take off because users are split.

eu, 10 months ago

That's fair but what if, say, the "news" instance dies/goes offine or something along these lines, isn't all the content it hosts going to be lost or become inaccessible? Not sure how the whole thing works but it's something that's been concerning me. With redundant communities across multiple instances at least the whole topic won't go down with any single instance.

guyman, 10 months ago

Yes. If there are no servers hosting content, that content is no longer accessible to the fediverse. Someone would have to reupload it.

wjrii, 10 months ago

I sort of think instances forming around distinct communities is what the Fediverse's early architects had in mind, but it just doesn't seem to be turning out that way. Users are not frequently self-segregating by ideology (e.g. lemmygrad) or interest (e.g. startrek.website). Even beehaw is not really specific enough to be ideologically distinct. Lemmy.ml is even less so, despite the devs/admins politics, and lemmy.world or lemmy.ca aren't even trying. Neither is kbin.social, to be fair, but imho that's okay. It's just a fact to deal with.

Without the expected behavior, you end up with one of two options. On one hand, you hope that the admins of tiny instances are superstars and populate their /c/'s or /m/'s to attract a following against all odds and force the projects back on the roadmap by having all the fans of a niche community or all the people interested in a specific viewpoint post mostly or entirely on the relevant instances /c/ or /m/. On the other, you have the discourse dominated by a few busier instances when their new "subs" populate more quickly. The latter, while not ideal, is not as bad as true centralization and, importantly, it seems to match actual behavior and it might be useful for front-end devs of apps and sites to make choices that work with the user behavior as best they can, like optional auto-aggregation of identically named communities.

bitwise, 10 months ago

Auto-aggregation with an option to disable it locally, maybe?

Deliverator, 10 months ago

Frankly I think we need more people before we can start getting concerned about things like that. If we're trying to make the Fediverse a viable alternative it has to be appealing and easy enough to use that people want to use it. If we don't get that right this whole thing is doomed from the start

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

The fastest way to get kbin.social defederated is if you try to build it into reddit with everyone participating from the same instance.

As for not being concerned, many in the fediverse watching us roll in are concerned. Not because they don't like redditors, but because everyone is going to one of 3 or so places.

ernest, 10 months ago

Hey, I think there's a lot of truth in that. I don't want to force anyone to stay here ;) I believe that kbin can be a stepping stone to a wider fediverse, which is great. However, I'm trying to keep the entry barrier as low as possible so that everyone can find their place here. The rest will come with time. Currently, we're working with contributors to make setting up and maintaining your own instance less of a nightmare, and it should change for the better soon.

https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml/p/485886/This-happened-quickly-Lemmy-is-now-the-second-biggest-platform-next#post-comment-855115

ps. The queue of deleted accounts will be processed with the next update.

ninjakitty7, 10 months ago

Thanks for all the hard work!

a1studmuffin, 10 months ago

I’ve found it really beneficial joining an instance that’s hosted locally to my country and/or city. Not only can you take advantage of the “Local” filter to literally see local posts in your area, but you also get an amazing ping so everything feels super responsive.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

And, to be extra super clear, you're a member of an instance related to your location but posting here on kbin.social right now.

Moving to a different instance does not disenfranchise anybody.

0110010001100010, 10 months ago

How did you find one that local to you? I'd love to do this as well! I've been kicking around just hosting one myself but I leave for vacation in 5 days so that's probably not a project for right now, lol.

Acetanilide, 10 months ago

Not OP but you could try fediverse party

https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers/

a1studmuffin, 10 months ago

I randomly saw someone post from @aussie.zone and the name grabbed my attention. I was actually considering starting my own one for Australians but didn’t need to bother. Perfect timing!

glittalogik, 10 months ago

aussie.zone was the first place I landed upon discovering the fediverse, but after hunting in vain for a dark/night-mode option I decided to keep exploring, and the interface/theming here is actually usable.

I've since learned that client-side UI/CSS browser extensions for Lemmy are a thing so that's always an option, and hopefully we'll start seeing RES-style extensions in the future.

a1studmuffin, 10 months ago

Nice! I’ve been using Jerboa for Android pretty much exclusively, so the theming and style is all defined by the app. kbin.social and every other Lemmy instance looks identical to me, it’s been an easy transition from Reddit. It’ll be great once a few more apps arrive on the scene!

Annoyed_Crabby, 10 months ago

same. i first made an account in World but some nice folks set up an instance for my home country so i migrate toward that. subscribe can then use to sub on community i want, and local can be a landing page for the country sub.

ArugulaZ, 10 months ago

Hey! Hey hey hey! No! I JUST moved away from Reddit! Now you're telling me I need to move into an even smaller place than this? Can we space out our social media crises a bit? I'm still winded from the Dutch douchebag buying Twitter.

Azzu, 10 months ago

But you’re not “actually” moving to a smaller place. You can still see everything. You’re still in the fediverse.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

You can still participate here. Your account is simply located elsewhere.

Liontigerwings, 10 months ago

Didn't you hear? Anytime there's more than 5 users we're doomed. We should all just be posting to small 3-5 person communities.

MonsieurHedge, 10 months ago

OP is a panicky buffoon who essentially wants the Internet to become a series of unhinged mountain hermits, because having more than one person per instance is OVERCENTRALIZATION THE CORPOS ARE COMING AAAAAAAAAAA

I wouldn't worry about it. I'd worry that there's no good way of exporting a federated "kbin account" to another instance if one becomes compromised in some way, or goes down permanently, which both hypothetically solves OP's insane paranoid rambling and more practical concerns.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Meta/Facebook is inviting Fediverse admins under NDA for “meetings” (mstdn.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384207

Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
https://www.loomio.com/d/QoH98Gg6/facebook-inc-is-planning-to-join-the-fediverse-how-do-we-make-it-lose-as-much-money-as-possible

Beware Of Meta Offering Gifts To Mastodon
https://medium.com/nextwithtech/beware-of-meta-offering-gifts-to-mastodon-6adb317e039d

Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media
https://marketingnewscanada.com/news/meta-vs-mastodon-battle-for-the-future-of-decentralized-social-media

Legal-Copyright discussion from Mastodon yesterday
ttps://mas.to/@franktaber/110602489997086618

And a cartoon to boot

https://cutie.city/@nuz/110602855304673785

guyman, 10 months ago

You can safely ignore him and people like him. Do what works for you. Don't get bogged down in theory. It's no substitute for experience.

lozunn, 10 months ago

The cynic in me screams that this post is to stir up FUD because someone at BigSocial is shitting their pants right now... :D (/s?)

But yes, you have some valid points but stretching too thin is not going to get us anywhere and will just result in people leaving due to lack of content. Remember that divide and conquer is a valid tactic too, so having many small instances isn't going to magically shield us from Bad Things (TM).

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

How would it benefit BigSocial to spread us out among instances?

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

I'll say it again: You moving your account to a smaller instance does not mean you can't read and post on kbin.social. So stretching too thin is not an issue.

As for FUD:

Meta/Facebook is inviting Fediverse admins under NDA for “meetings” (mstdn.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384207

Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
https://www.loomio.com/d/QoH98Gg6/facebook-inc-is-planning-to-join-the-fediverse-how-do-we-make-it-lose-as-much-money-as-possible

Beware Of Meta Offering Gifts To Mastodon
https://medium.com/nextwithtech/beware-of-meta-offering-gifts-to-mastodon-6adb317e039d

Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media
https://marketingnewscanada.com/news/meta-vs-mastodon-battle-for-the-future-of-decentralized-social-media

Legal-Copyright discussion from Mastodon yesterday
ttps://mas.to/@franktaber/110602489997086618

And a cartoon to boot
https://cutie.city/@nuz/110602855304673785

alex, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

The general consensus is that this was going to be a monetary offer to allow Instagram to further colonize the Fediverse by purchasing one of the larger servers.

Wrong. Stop fearmongering. There was no such offer. At least do your research and get your facts straight before you make claims you can't back up.

There is no confirmation of any financial contracts, or moderation arrangements and Eugen Rochko/Gargron has stated he doesn't know anything about any secret deals.[1]

From @supernovae:

The nda wasn’t because of some absurd agreement but just the fact they’re launching a new project and we’re getting access to engineers and product team to discuss what the relationship could be. And they went well.[2]

There was a call to talk about engineering, moderation, safety, support for user privacy controls and how federation would look like. (and more)

There was no deal signing or any bullshit like that - that’s all fake news.

The nda is because none of this stuff is released and it’s up to meta to share details or admins to join the ongoing calls to learn in advance of launch what is going on.[3]

We don’t know, what we don’t know. So i initiated contact and meta obliged. Because the product isn’t released yet, there is an NDA.[4]

From stux@mstdn.social:

i did not attend the meeting, did not sign a NDA and i do not get 'financial support' from Meta or any related company.

I put quite some work in to pay for it all. [5]

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

I didn't say there was deal-signing. I said they wanted to talk 'off the record'.

I'm reporting what I heard on Mastodon.

And that was referring to Instagram, not Meta.

Gray, 10 months ago

Instagram is owned by Meta.

alex, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

This is all ridiculous semantic arguments. Yes, you did say there was a deal. Now you're trying to walk it back.

The general consensus is that this was going to be a monetary offer to allow Instagram to further colonize the Fediverse by purchasing one of the larger servers.

Firstly, the last time I checked, "a monetary offer" is what person might otherwise call a deal. If you propose to give me money for something, that is a deal. And as I stated multiple times with proof, no such deal was made. You really don't like being wrong, do you?

Instagram and Facebook are owned by Meta. Meta is the controlling entity (Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, among other things). Whatever you choose to call it, Instagram or Meta, it is the same company. Potato, po-tah-to. They are in essence the same thing. But let's be factual: It was Meta, not Instagram who approached those admins and again your information is wrong. this article specifically says Meta, so this does this, and this, and this too

What you "heard" was rumours and fear-mongering. You have not offered one single solitary shred of proof. I have offered several to the contrary.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Meta/Facebook is inviting Fediverse admins under NDA for “meetings” (mstdn.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384207

Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
https://www.loomio.com/d/QoH98Gg6/facebook-inc-is-planning-to-join-the-fediverse-how-do-we-make-it-lose-as-much-money-as-possible

Beware Of Meta Offering Gifts To Mastodon
https://medium.com/nextwithtech/beware-of-meta-offering-gifts-to-mastodon-6adb317e039d

Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media
https://marketingnewscanada.com/news/meta-vs-mastodon-battle-for-the-future-of-decentralized-social-media

Legal-Copyright discussion from Mastodon yesterday
ttps://mas.to/@franktaber/110602489997086618

And a cartoon to boot
https://cutie.city/@nuz/110602855304673785

Now, there's the evidence I have.

I have no interest in your response to this.

I will not be responding.

Goodbye.

abff08f4813c, 10 months ago

I've been thinking about setting up a single-user instance of kbin for myself. Maybe this is the kick in the pants I need to finally get around to it.

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

I have my own pixelfed server running

Elegast, 10 months ago

Man my only issue with pixelfed is followed tags aren't showing up on my feed. There a issue already submitted, so hopefully it's resolved soon!

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

On your own server or someone else’s? There is an artisan command to fix this count

Elegast, 10 months ago

On my home feed on Pixelfed.social. I would expect posts with followed tags to show up under my home feed unless that is not intended.

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

That is strange and I’m not sure what’s going on there. You could try asking on the pixelfed discord

Elegast, 10 months ago

Theres already a github issues submitted.

Hopefully its resolved soon, I really want to like pixelfed.

sharkato, 10 months ago

Ugh, I've found it difficult to get it up and running. Need to throw more time at it but I thought the docker containers would "just run".

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

I’m running it using docker-compose

abff08f4813c, 10 months ago

Cool! Do you have a writeup or something that you could share? Maybe any mods you did to the docker-compose files to get it to work? Would help a lot of us out.

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

This is what I used artectrex.eu/pixelfed-docker/

buedi, 10 months ago

That is also holding me back. I am hosting tons of stuff myself, all dockerized, but I was not able to get kbin up and running yet. I wish someone would manage the images, so we can just pull, edit a .env and run / upgrade it.

For me the whole process always hangs at a step that seems to have something to do with the php setup. I tried on different servers, even created a fresh Ubuntu 22 LTS and still had the same problem. I am sure I am doing something wrong (probably editing something incorrectly in the settings), but the process it not as easy yet as it is for the other services I am hosting at the moment.

WhiteOakBayou, 10 months ago

How was that process? I've been going back and forth on it for a few weeks now.

Iamgroot, 10 months ago

I’m running it on my pi and it’s been okay for the most part

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

What would be the benefit of a single user instance?
I guess you'd really control your data.
You could do a magazine as your own personal blog.
And you could still post to any instance you want.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

I'm not necessarily recommending a single-user instance, just a smaller one. The people who do have single-user instances generally put out a lot of their own content.

This guy has his own instance, 26k posts and 31k followers.
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral

czech, 10 months ago

You won't be defederated from other instances. On the flip side if instances start using whitelists instead of automatically federating it could become an issue.

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

Good point. Defederation is one of my biggest concerns about the fediverse.

Machinist3359, 10 months ago

Same, though I'm lazy enough that I was waiting for linuxserver.io to have a kbin image. I haven't looked at the documentation yet, but if it's straightforward enough...

Ethanol, 10 months ago

I set mine up on a small VPS using Ubuntu/Docker. The admin guide needs work as I ran into about 3 issues that I had to hunt for in the issues section of codeberg.org

garrettw87, 10 months ago

Judging from the issues I’ve been watching on the hit repo, the setup process is still getting some kinks worked out, but it’s not impossible.

abff08f4813c, 10 months ago

That's cool, I didn't know about that. Hopefully someone acts on https://discourse.linuxserver.io/t/kbin-and-lemmy-fediverse-reddit-alternatives/7667 soon.

lohrun, 10 months ago

I spun up my own instance to help spread the load and to help with new features for the kbin platform. (I’m currently testing some on mine now ;) )

I’ve mentioned my instance in passing in some comment threads but I don’t want to feel like I’m an advertising spam bot (like all of us have seen on the website that shall not be named )

I have pulled in the top communities from the top instances into my instance and I’ve said up some unique magazine feeds that get new content every hour.

I completely agree that we should lessen the load of the “main” server but there isn’t a nice way of doing it. Having other instance owners advertise their instances all over the place feels bad and telling people that they need to leave and make a new account also feels bad.

At the end of the day, running an instance is a pet project for me and I hope to see the community and the kbin code base grow. If you are enjoying my auto updating magazines, definitely let me know if you have additional suggestions to add. I currently only have several news feeds set up but it could be interesting to set up gaming or some other genre of content.

xwToRdD3YHv8Up, 10 months ago

Is there not a way that folks with server access can run a duplicate of this instance and then put it behind a load balanced proxy? If kbin does not support this, I say we help with the code to make this a possibility.

CFinley97, 10 months ago

I won't downvote bc I think this is a genuine question OP is presenting, but I disagree with people splitting quite yet.

People will naturally find their pockets as the Fediverse grows. The benefit is that it's already decentralized, so you have that option.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Decentralized means that the userbase is spread out. How big is kbin.social?

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

And does that look decentralized?

deweydecibel, 10 months ago

Centralization is a result of social behavior. People naturally gravitate towards the place where others are.

Like, the internet wasn't centralized by corporations. It was centralized by the users. And it will always happen. It's a very predictable pattern of human behavior.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago

Let's say the park is kbin.social. Does living in your neighborhood somewhere else mean that you cannot go visit and communicate with people in the park?

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

And that's why we need to constantly remind ourselves to spread out while staying connected (the precise function of federation)

jivemasta, 10 months ago

People need to just chill out and touch some grass.

Like how long have you been on the internet? If the whole federation thing can be bought out by a company and ruined, then it's a failed experiment and we move on to the next thing. It's a tale as old as the internet itself, cool grassroots thing gets popular, sells out, destroys itself, repeat every few years.

For now, kbin and lemmy are working, but don't think this will last forever or won't get tested. Either the concept is good and it will stand the test of corporate takeover, or it won't and we try something else.

sentient_loom, 10 months ago

No, we shouldn't just passively observe the experiment either fail or succeed by its own pre-existing state. We should actively engineer our behavior and connections to avoid the slimey tentacles of corporate manipulation.

Gargleblaster, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

If the whole federation thing can be bought out by a company and ruined

And that's a strawman. It's getting very reddity in here.

fraydabson, 10 months ago

For those who are interested in a different Kbin instance I joined Kbin.cafe the other day. It’s very small right now and has some good hardware running it I believe. Not many magazines/communities but of course we can browse others from any instance.

It runs smoothly too since low traffic. I love the fediverse!

HRDS_654, 10 months ago

The funny part about this story is that, while everyone has their "price", most of the people building these instances did so because they want nothing to do with these corporations.

Now admittedly things can change, but these corporations also don't seem to understand how these insurances work. Buying one instances, while shitty and something that hopefully won't happen, isn't the same as buying a company. You can't "own" the Fediverse because of the nature of what it is.

Elevator7009, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Some other instances can be found here. It doesn’t list these three instances: kbin.cafe, feddit.online, and fedia.io.

EDIT: Just found those three instances on page 2, 2, and 1 respectively. Oops.

AnonTwo, 10 months ago

It does list kbin.cafe. The list that loads is just really small. You need to press next and kbin.cafe is on page 2

Elevator7009, 10 months ago

That’s weird, because I did check all the pages it lists twice and didn’t find kbin.cafe, but I double-checked now and it is indeed on page 2. I have no idea how I missed that, thanks for the correction!

sbb, 10 months ago

An overburdened-with-users server could discontinue allowing new sign-ups on their sign-up page, but rather post a link to a list of where willing-to-accept-new-users servers are.