One thing I noticed after installing this, which you may want to look into, is that it also changed the icons on the settings page to match the home page sorting icons.
I'm more of a visual learner and none of the explanations of the Fediverse included a detailed map of all the different entities involved. By all means, please make corrections, I'm sure there is at least one misunderstanding in there somewhere. Also not sure how Mastodon fits in, seems like the format would be incompatible with kbin and/or Lemmy. Thanks.
Well, the microblog feature on kbin is sorted differently than Mastodon, but it's otherwise the same thing, to the point that you can even just follow Mastodon users with it. Technically everything on the Fediverse can interact to some degree, but it is very awkward to access Mastodon posts from Lemmy or Lemmy and kbin threads from Mastodon. It can be done, but it is a very suboptimal user experience.
All software and online communities go through growing pains, it's still Eternal September after all. Have you noticed the users making test comments just to try out the different markup options (bold, underline, strikethrough, etc)? It's always fascinating to see a new platform make those kinds of baby steps.
I suspect kbin will improve as requests for features gain traction and the developer (the only one!) finds the time to add them.
The part I'm getting tripped up revolves around accessing the content in another part of the fediverse. e.g., if I go to a lemmy instnace, it will ask for a log-in specfic to it (i.e. it doesn't recognize my kbin log-in). So what's the mechanism by which travel between platforms happens? If I understood correctly, some stuff will show up here that's been 'retweeted'. But what if I'm searching for content that lives in Lemmy or Mastodon instances?
I think part of this problem is how you got there.
If you follow a normal weblink (for example to a lemmy discussion) you arrive there as a user that is not logged in.
If you see a post in your feed here on kbin (the same discussion as above thats hosted on lemmy) you can interact with it and your interaction will be shared thorugh the fediverse.
@speck you can copy a link to the post in the search bar, this will then make the instance start to federate with the instance hosting the content. So you can do fediverse@kbin.social or you can do https://kbin.social/m/fediverse if the @ method doesn't work
Ah, you've got the common misconception that a lot of people have, but it's more the other way around. It's not your login that federates but your content. So you don't go to other sites you get the info from the other site brought to you and you view it here.
And this isn't just to other "reddit" sites running kbin or Lemmy. This is to Calckey Mastodon (Twitter), Peertube (YT), etc. All information on the fediverse is available to everyone, though certain platforms might choose not to federate with another platform.
Normally you could just search or find federated threads in All, but with the reddit migration there's a lot of strain happening, so some things aren't working as they should, in this case federation. But that will fixed soon.
I don't know if this will help, but a simplistic video about the fediverse.
I'm curious about that video link as an example of federatable content, because Framatube looks like a Peertube instance.
While you did mention Federation is limited here at the moment, when it's fully working on Kbin would it be possible to access the video on a kbin page by looking for joinpeertube@framatube as a Kbin magazine? Would I then be able to like/comment on the video without leaving Kbin, and also still be using my Kbin account? That would be quite the trick and it sounds quite exciting!
In theory yes. While all the information of the fediverse is available, not every platform chooses to federate with every other platform. But in this case I believe kbin is planning on federating with Peertube. Lemmy on the other hand I don't believe (I could be wrong) is planning on federating with many others.
In a similar example, I can follow Pixelfed accounts (IG) from my Calckey account (Twitter) and comment, like and share from there without having to go to Pixelfed to do so. It really is a great concept, and somewhat like how the web used to be (universal standards) before we let like five companies control everything.
You are making sense, just remember your login does not travel between kbin and lemmy. When you are on kbin, you can search for communities on the server you joined or across the fediverse. The way to do that is community@instance.name
For example, say if I found out the beehaw.org server had an awesome gaming community, well I can just type gaming@beehaw.org into the search box and then subscribe to it. It will then federated into the server (the server will start pulling in new posts - but not old posts) that means others can now see it too. That's why if you see the message that it's not fully federated and you might see more on the original instance.
Your login is just a place to reside but with the fediverse, you can pull in content to view. Which helps as you don't need multiple log ins for multiple services. I've seen a few people ask about people with the same username as theirs on other instances and that will happen but remember that your username is like email. You have username@instance.name, so whilst someone might share the same username, they'll never be on the same instance. That's how you tell others apart.
The 'content is federated, but your account isn't' thing definitely tripped me up too. It feels like the platforms would be improved if there were better tools for finding good content from around the fediverse, ideally from your home server, in my opinion.
To add to this, if you want to access them from your kbin account here, the place you want to look them up is https://kbin.social/magazines (also linked inside the bar at the top of the page) - that's where the search box is!
Kbin magazines and are the same thing as beehaw communities, different servers/instances just sometimes call them different things.
Yeah most solutions would require you to take some action on the instance you're migrating from. Another thing I just thought of would be some sort of encryption thing where you generate a private key or passphrase and use it to cryptographically verify your identity on a new server.
Looks awesome, thank you for your hard work. One question though, any idea why this doesn't work when I click on the drop down menu and select subscribed page, or All page? The css stops working until I go back to before I clicked on the subscribe page.
As far as I can tell, kbin is currently struggling to connect to many Fediverse instances in a stable manner, but this is temporary. The main developer is already in the process to recruiting help with that.
As far as having multiple accounts, you will have to have them for the moment as different Fediverse servers do not play nice with each other. If you want to interact with kbin content from a Mastodon instance, you technically can but it will be a mess.
You just have to wait for the dev community to work on consensus about how all of the ActivityPub features can play nice with each-other. Probably will take a couple of months.
Do you know if there’s something at a protocol level for dealing with grouping or is that something each platform will need to figure out? I’ve made the move recently and the idea of a single account being able to see and reply to content from any place is really cool
But, where I can see that working on a microblogging level like mastodon, where there’s a pretty flat stream of consciousness, does the additional layer of structure for “Reddit style” subreddits / magazine és/ communities make this difficult at an ActivityPub level? For example, take gaming. I understand there will be a gaming@kbin, gaming@lemmy, gaming@xyz etc but following any of those from mastodon is a nightmare because you see every comment in one big feed
I guess ActivityPub just defines how an instance can speak to another instance, and what each instance displays or sends is up to that instance
Your mastodon account is only good for loggin in the specific instance of mastodon where you made the account.
As for posting into kbin from mastodon, you can follow a magazine as if it was a user, for example i'm, @Mastur, whereas this magazine is @fediverse. That's what i've understood so far, maybe if the federation was working properly i could test/try stuff further :(
Yeah, I guess I understand that it can't be the Mastodon "account", but I'm seeing active users on Kbin with activity who are from instances of other sites, like @JamesK for instance, who is on a Mastodon instance. How does that work?
I think that means there's at least one kbin.social account who follows that Mastodon account, or at least that those posts have been boosted by accounts followed by Kbin users. As a result, kbin.social would've generated a local profile for that person so you can see the posts of his that have federated here. Similar to how when you use Mastodon, you can see a version of accounts on other instances' profiles without leaving your own instance.
I have an account on mastodon, which I’m following from my kbin account so that I can see my mastodon feed and respond to articles from within this platform without having to switch apps. I could also do the reverse if I wished. This probably helps those mastodon articles be more visible to other users on kbin.social. Others are probably doing likewise.
This is blowing my mind (your comment). I'm trying to find an app that will access kbin and mastadon, but now reading the arrangement you're describing with following your own sign-in, I don't know what to think.
Going to load up Tusky and see how that goes.
Go to search and put in your full mastodon address (eg @archiehasantlers@mastodon.social but without the space because I couldn’t figure out how to stop it auto formatting it into a link )
That should bring up your mastodon account as a user you can then click on and follow.
The one thing I miss most about the old, old days of Reddit is the idea that the downvote button isn't an "I disagree" button. It's supposed to be a "this post is off-topic/irrelevant" button, or maybe at most a "this post is factually incorrect" button.
Unfortunately, I don't see any sort of unenforceable code of conduct surviving the onslaught of the general internet public. It's a nice idea, but if it didn't work on Reddit, it isn't going to work here.
I agree. This is an evolution for everyone involved right now. A bit of wild west is going to happen here for sure. Bots and scripts did alot for the site and new ones will have to be made. "reddiquette" is moderator and community controled, right now we are still unpacking. I would like to think this new post Reddit paradigm will be an intellectual evolutionary jump and not a drastic commercialization capture and kill. All hail our new kbin overlords !
Most fediverse instances are small enough for a hobbyist to run on their entertainment budget or small donations. Very few of them are the size of, say, Mastodon.social. Even some of the next largest ones like mstdn.social cost about $400-something a month which is a lot for a hobbyist but is covered by donations by virtue of being so big. But your average fedi instance? In a recent reddit thread where someone asking the same question, the reply they got was "it runs off a Mac mini I keep in a drawer". This is why fedi is sustainable. (This is also why people trying to give Lemmy and Kbin instance admins advice on how to grow indefinitely miss the point, fedi works by not having instances be the size of reddit)
Yes, exactly. This growth for the sake of growth mindset is a global sickness we need to overcome. If my Kbin instance has enough people I find interesting and they in turn don’t hate my guts, that’s enough for it to be considered a community by me.
I don’t need infinite growth and more than the admins fear it, and I sure as hell don’t need advertising here to further encourage yet another endless cycle of growth.
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