OC How did you end up finding kbin? Did you migrate here from Reddit?

I was initially introduced to Mastodon a few years ago by a close friend and picked up on it quickly given the benefits of not having to deal with advertising, or being shown what a mega-corporation thought I should have to see through algorithms. I have since found a great instance over on cupoftea.social that promotes quality discussion with friendly participants.

This planted my initial seed about federated social media. I knew from some experience that it could be applied in many different ways. I started looking at Reddit alternatives recently as things started heating up over the recent API changes and came across both kbin and lemmy.

Anyways that's enough about my journey, I'm more curious about yours. What brought you here and do you plan on staying for a while?

zuko,

Never knew kbin until seeing a post in Reddit mentioning r/kbinMigration was banned. Streisand effect!

VulcanSphere,
VulcanSphere avatar

Reddit's own goal should spook potential investors

Basil,
Basil avatar

That post is where I came from too!

Lenny,

Same here. Busy prepping for the end of my Reddit days and said I'd hitch my wagon here while I could still get a username without undersores or numbers.

AADrcw,
AADrcw avatar

Same here! I was originally looking into lemmy and saw kbin mentioned a few times in relation to the sub being banned, checked it out and decided to stay.

Gabbro,
Gabbro avatar

Same. I initially switched to Squabbles but I prefer the UI here. Lemmy was too confusing with dodgy admins and Tildes doesn't want to embrace the horde, so I'm here.

Jellosnark,

Exactly why I made an account over here. I checked this place out yesterday, was iffy on it, then today saw the ban post and figured if they're trying to silence the main hub of talk about a competitor then it might be worth making an account and sticking around.

ravens23,

That’s how I originally found Reddit (from Digg) so the circle of life continues.

p-rking,
p-rking avatar

Me too, have been on Mastodon since 2018 but for some reason never looked at Lemmy or kbin.

Joined a Lemmy instance a couple of weeks ago but that’s just defederated and will shut down, so I’ve applied to join another instance.

Following the disastrous reddit AMA, which revealed the sheer disregard that Reddit has for its users and the third party apps that are needed, I decided to join kbin as well.

So far I’m enjoying Kbin very much.

I won’t use Reddit during the shutdown but will occasionally peak in after the 14th, but only to see if sense has prevailed. If it hasn’t then come June 30th, I’ll delete all my posts from Reddit and then delete the account.

Nachoman_Randy_Sandwich,
Nachoman_Randy_Sandwich avatar

I came over after the AMA. From what I've heard on the grapevine reddit can restore your last deleted comment. I want my content gone from reddit so I plan on editing all of my comments to Thank you u/spez your nightmare of an AMA. It showed your true colours. Your direct behavior is the reason I am leaving reddit. Then i'll delete my account. I think power delete suite allows you to mass edit comments.

p-rking,
p-rking avatar

The recent interviews with u/spez convinced me that he is either incompetent or malicious. I’ve deleted my account early. It’s liberating to be away. There are reports of Reddit reverting deleted/edited posts.

Avatarlue,
Avatarlue avatar

I think same as many new people here. When I saw the news about Apollo it left a really bad taste in my mouth. It's funny, I switched from Alien Blue to the official reddit app years ago (as they intended) and while I've been increasingly annoyed with the official app it wasn't enough to deter me. When I saw the news about Apollo I was finally annoyed enough to delete the official app and switch to Apollo for its final month and got a glimpse at what I was missing out on. I also knew the clock was ticking to find a new home.

I started reading into reddit alternatives, looked at a few and saw stuff about lemmy and the fediverse. Tried to go to lemmy and couldn't connect, I assume because they had the same traffic surge as all the reddit alternatives. Then I saw the kbin migration subreddit was banned and decided to try out kbin. Here I am.

lol,
lol avatar

Came here from reddit!

Gordon_Freeman,
Gordon_Freeman avatar

I've been looking for some Reddit alternative for some time (before all this API debacle) I found Lemmy, but most instances are too polarized in general (they are eaither far-right or far left)

I never liked Twitter (I'm not really into the microblogging format in general) so Mastodon is not a choice, someone mentioned Kbin (and Tildes) on Reddit and here I am

As a user I don't really like the concept of the fediverse, it just make access to information harder since plenty of the information will be available on multiple instances so the activity feed will be filled with the same news again and again from different instances making it easier to miss the news I want to read, but it looks like is the direction internet is going, I'll have to deal with it, like it or not

fuzzzerd,

I'm definitely worried about that same issue. I'm not sure how we solve it, but I think it can be solved and it's worth the hassle to give users back some control.

AdmiralSnackbar,
AdmiralSnackbar avatar

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you guys mean, but here’s my thought: suppose, in the future, the fediverse grows and this issue begins to compound. Is it not solved by servers mutually federating with each other, and therefore content will be shared between them anyways? I can see what goes on over on Lemmy, and they can see what goes on here. Doesn’t it all get combined? In which case reposts could either be removed or naturally filtered out by interactions from users, the same as reddit worked. Or is the problem that if you want to be a part of two servers that DON’T federate with each other, you then see the same news twice?

Cavalarrr,
Cavalarrr avatar

I believe the issue is if you subscribed to e.g. /m/technology here and technology@beehaw.org, two separate users, one on kbin and one on beehaw will likely post a big news article to their respective instance's community.
If you're subbed to both, you will likely see the same article in your feed twice. In terms of filtering, how do you decide what is filtered without purely doing it manually? They're both hosted on their own respective instance, with their own discussions, and whilst I can comment from this kbin account on the beehaw.org instance, that's not going to do anything with the article on the native kbin post.
There's no way to say 'nope, that link has already been posted on beehaw, you can't post it in kbin', as that would defeat the point of federation. I feel this is definitely a valid concern, as subscribing to 'duplicates' is a understandable, if you want to see as much discussion as possible, but at the end of the day, you'll likely have to choose between convenience or dealing with "duplicate" posts.

AdmiralSnackbar,
AdmiralSnackbar avatar

Ah, I see what you mean. Sounds like something a browser extension might be able to handle. You could make it simple, like "filter out all articles that link to the same exact webpage" to start, and then go from there to fine-tune and tweak. Or maybe there would be a way to have it say "hey, these two posts link to the same page, would you like to combine their comment sections?". I'm sure there are ways around it, this is all so new and things will develop.

Cavalarrr,
Cavalarrr avatar

You're right, not sure why I didn't think of an extension to handle it. Not sure you could do something with combining comments sections, I suppose it could work for replies to existing comments, but yeah. You could definitely have something like "only show me X link duplicates, ranked by current comments" or something. I'd be surprised if something to that effect isn't already in the works.

CyanCorsair,
CyanCorsair avatar

Went to Mastodon yesterday, then I found Lemmy and figured yeah, Lemmy's good. Format's more to my tastes. Just been subscribing to the new magazines that I assume are being made as part of the current (partial, at least) Reddit migration.

I think Reddit's time is over anyway. :)

Chimaera,

I’m on Mastodon and read about Lemmy and kbin there (from Reddit users) and decided to give it a try.

Ov3rdose_Eve,

Yup, just saw the post about r/kbinmigration being banned and well i guess heere i am XD

NarrativeBear,
NarrativeBear avatar

Seeing r/kbinmigration being banned is what made me want to abandon the sinking ship Reddit is.

GoNoGo,

Same.

Anticompetitive behavior is the hallmark of weakness & fear upon Reddit's part. As a former 3rd party app user, they essentially made themselves a non-factor in my life going forward, yet Reddit wants to be petty about it.

sol,

Same here. Also the first time I've ever got the username sol without modifiers!

rodhlann,
rodhlann avatar

Also here trying to find a reddit replacement. Was reading up on Lemmy and Kbin but saw there was some gripes about the dev team behind Lemmy, and got forwarded here from that thread! The UI is a lot better on Kbin, and seems like the people behind it are hopefully better too!

pankin,

Literally just made an account here, I'm about done with Reddit after 14 years. Still not sure what the overlap/federalization means as far as this site overlapping with others.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

Take a look at the sidebar. You'll see it says under the magazine (think subreddit) logo and chat: /@chat/

@chat is the name of the subreddit, kbin.social is the name of the site. Another popular site, or instance in the language of the "fediverse", is lemmy. lemmy.ml is their main instance. You'll notice some threads you'll see on kbin here (what you are signed in on) will have something like /@sometopic/

That is a thread created on lemmy.ml. A completely separate site from kbin.social but they push content to each other. Similarly, someone on lemmy.ml can see this very thread and comment on it without leaving lemmy. Their sidebar will say !chat because lemmy uses the !something instead of /@something/ but that's a technicality.

Very_Bad_Janet,

How do I subscribe to magazines that are on different instances, say on Lemmy, if I only have a kbin.social account? Also, how do I search for them on kbin? So far I am only able to subscribe to those on kbin.social. I also have registered on Mastodon.social and only know how to follow Mastodon accounts.

tjes,

Click the search glass at the top right and search for @magazine@lemmy.instance.name

That will let you subscribe or click on it to browse.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

You go and browse the instance you want first. You don't have to create an account there, you can view everything, just can't post of comment without an account obviously.

Then, you look at the name of the community you want, in the form of /!something/ or it could be /@lemmy.world/ too.

You come back to kbin and type or paste that into the search bar without the exclamation mark but with an @ sign instead. so /!something/ sould be typed as /@something/ into kbin's search bar. The option to subscribe will appear in the search result.

You can use the same technique on mastodon to subscribe to kbin and lemmy accounts (and communities because technically they are accounts too). Just type or paste the /@something/ into the mastodon search bar.

Nachoman_Randy_Sandwich,
Nachoman_Randy_Sandwich avatar

Dude you should post this explanation in one of the kbin magazines. It really helpful.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

You have my blessing if you want to copy and paste it as a PSA to your favorite magazine :)

Very_Bad_Janet,

Thank you - so helpful!

Ov3rdose_Eve,

could one make a "giude to kbin" or sth? :D

moonie,

Thanks for this explanation. Who decides how these various instances comingle, or is it all just kind of one big blob?

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

As far as I understand, unless the admins of one instance block another instance, the users are free to subscribe to users and communities on other fediverse sites to their heart's content. Your feed will be a mix of everything you personally subscribed to, and everything shared (or boosted in kbin terms) by users you're subscribed to.

KernelHispanic, (edited )
KernelHispanic avatar

I heard about this on Reddit. I'm trying to shift away from there. I think this is one of our best alternatives. It's really unfortunate what they are doing to the site. The CEO is an absolute joke. I am still confused on this and lemmy and how this all works? Like people on lemmy can read content here too?

Also my only thing about this site is that I wish that they put add a comment first instead of at the end of the page. It's so simple to fix - just put the <div id"comment-add> before the <div id="comments">. In inspect element it's as simple as dragging the "comment-add" div before the "comments" div.

Edit: In just a few minutes, I have created a chrome extension that moves the add comment to the top of the page. If you want it please send me a message. I might make a post.

jr,

Perhaps that’s by design to make sure we read what’s already been said before our own comments? :)

DaDragon,

As I understand it, the idea is that all content is thrown into one publicly accessible 'pile'. (Granted, it's more like everyone has their own little pile, but can also look at and rummage through other people's piles)
It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the long term, whether everyone splits off into their own server that hosts 'their' content, or if most people will simply stay with a centrally run instance like Kbin.

c0rpsey,
c0rpsey avatar

That’s a helpful analogy for me, a n00b

readbeanicecream,
readbeanicecream avatar

With all of the reddit shenanigans, I saw someone posted about Lemmy. So, I joined the top instance at the time, Beehaw. Then, Beehaw decided to defederate (what seemed like) without user feedback from a couple of instances. So, I tried kbin. So far, I am enjoying it.

st3ph3n,
st3ph3n avatar

I started looking for Reddit alternatives with the chaos going on over there right now. I already have a mastodon account so I vaguely get the fediverse, and I tried out both Lemmy and kbin, and found myself preferring kbin. I also want a tildes.net account, but that requires an invitation so I haven’t got one yet.

This whole situation has made me realized how addicted I’ve gotten to just scrolling through shit on Reddit multiple times per day.

Blegh,
Blegh avatar

Here from reddit. Trying to get to grips with it and hoping it's a new home for many.

Anyone know that Kbin stands for?
And what does 'boost' do?

RoboRay, (edited )
RoboRay avatar

A way to "bridge" communities on different federated instances might be possible (not right now, it would need to be invented). That would effectively turn the bridged communities into mirrors of each other. But it would have to be done through the federation mechanisms, and there may not be enough interest among the stakeholders to develop a technology for that.

I think it's more likely that certain communities on certain instances will over time become the dominant community for the field of topics. So, technology@beehaw.org might become the most popular place to discuss Technology in general, while /m/Steamdeck might become the place where most people discuss the Steamdeck. Spreading the dominant communities out across multiple instances will also make the server and bandwidth requirements easier to manage, since one instance doesn't have to shoulder the full load of everything.

You might also see more focused rather than general instances, where an instance will limit itself to certain types of communities... such as an instance that hosts discussion communities only for various Linux distros, or one that has only communities for individual cities or other real-world localities.

SoldierOfCydonia,
SoldierOfCydonia avatar

I came here from Reddit, as it was mentioned as an alternative. So far I feel very lost here and I need to get used to this different layout. I also feel lack of some communities, which I've been following on Reddit, but I know, it might change with time.

sparse_neuron,

Migrated here from lemmy as I found the UI/UX to be much more usable.

rolfthedog,

Yup

Scarceboi,
Scarceboi avatar

Coming from Reddit. Sad to see what's happening over there.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • chat
  • DreamBathrooms
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • hgfsjryuu7
  • InstantRegret
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • vwfavf
  • rosin
  • PowerRangers
  • kavyap
  • mdbf
  • cisconetworking
  • Leos
  • everett
  • cubers
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • GTA5RPClips
  • khanakhh
  • osvaldo12
  • modclub
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • tacticalgear
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • All magazines
    •