The https://kbin.social server is now federating with the Fediverse. You can follow/interact with kbin.social magazines & users from other Kbin servers, Mastodon & rest of the Fediverse. For example the TIL magazine is at @TodayILearned, the lead dev of Kbin is at @ernest
There's a new Kbin server at https://readit.buzz which is run by the same people as the Universodon.com Mastodon server. It's open for signups, just click "log in" and then "register".
p.s. If you are browsing a magazine, thread or account from Kbin (or anywhere else on the Fediverse!) and you want to interact with it somewhere else on the Fediverse but you can't find it by searching, here's how to make your server notice it:
Go to Kbin in your web browser
Copy the web address of what you want to interact with
Paste that address into the search box on Mastodon (or any other Fediverse server type)
It will then appear on your own server where you can interact with it.
@feditips This is exactly what makes this a not-very-user-friendly social media experience for anyone who wants to interact with more than one self-contained community…
@joshix@feditips I’d click one single link. At no point would I copy a url, then go to a different site with a few clicks and paste that URL into that site’s search function.
I think we are talking about different things here?
The single link you see on Twitter just takes you to Reddit's website. It doesn't let you take part in Reddit from twitter.
If you just want to share a link to Kbin from Mastodon, sure that's easy, just post the link.
What I'm talking about is interaction across different platforms, replying to a Kbin thread from a Mastodon account. This is impossible on Twitter, because Twitter and Reddit don't have interoperability.
Kbin and Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms all use a common standard called ActivityPub to communicate between servers. This means people on different kinds of server can interact and follow each other as if they were on the same server.
You cannot follow Reddit accounts from Twitter or have any kind of interaction, because they have no such common standard and no federation either.
@feditips@wrigleyfield@joshix This highlights an issue though - the additional functionality applies a usability cost to everything, because it makes overall explanations more complex and confusing.
@feditips@wrigleyfield@joshix Something I've observed in IT: people overlook fixes and solutions that seem "easy" or "obvious" to them in retrospect, because they've stopped considering the obvious. And usually that's because context cues have given them every reason to presume (and dread) complexity.
@feditips@wrigleyfield@joshix If you add a second "advanced" method for driving a car and start talking about it, don't be surprised if people shrink back from the steering wheel and ask why you've made everything complicated.
@misc@feditips@wrigleyfield I think a better solution to the problem would be a scheme for fediverse content. Just replace "https://" with e.g. "fedi://" in the url and the post will be opened in you locally configured instance/app
The ability to load a remote profile/post is already there manually with copy/paste and through plugins. Might as well automate it through something like a fedi://
The instructions above are only if your server hasn't noticed a particular account or server yet. If it's already noticed them, you don't need those instructions.
If you were on Gmail, and you wanted to communicate with someone on Yahoo Mail, you wouldn't try to log in on Yahoo with your Gmail account.
To interact with Kbin from Mastodon, you can either find the account or group directly such as @ernest, or if your server hasn't noticed it yet you can manually make your server notice it by copying and pasting the web address into the search box on your server.
The account @ernest is on Kbin, but you can interact and follow it
I don't understand how I can interact with Kbin using my Mastodon identity. Are you saying I have to find what the mastodon.world equivelent on Kbin is?...
All this is the point @wrigleyfield was making. I consider myself a decenlty tech savy person. 90% of people using the internet wouldn't have even gotten this far.
The procedure in my post is only for use if your server hasn't yet noticed an account, thread or group. It's meant as a last resort rather than first resort. It's mainly useful for groups or accounts that are very new and haven't been noticed by many servers yet.
Servers cannot instantly notice every post and every account from every other server, it would be horrifically expensive and drive the Fediverse into the hands of big tech:
@feditips
Copy and paste URL is always a good tip when travelling through the fediverse. With accounts it also seems to work with kbin, but with posts it doesn't seem to work as usual. I'm not sure if it has been adjusted in the meantime, but last week it definitely didn't work yet https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/t/3829/How-do-I-comment-on-mastodon-stuff
@caos@feditips But it does work the other way: enter the URL of a kbin post in the search line on Mastodon, Friendica, etc., and the post will usually be found and can be commented on and shared. If you find interesting posts in #kbin or Lemmy or Friendica forums, boost them with your other Fediverse accounts. This is also a good way to further network the Fediverse: You always hear something like "kbin is much too small, it can't be a Reddit replacement" It's not that small, because it's part of the #Fediverse, part of something bigger. The people from the walled gardens can't even imagine that at the beginning.
p.p.s. Several people asking in the thread about how to appear on the microblogging sections of Kbin magazines.
As far as I can tell, just include one of the magazine's listed tags in your posts on Mastodon etc. For example to appear on the Apple magazine's microblogging section include #apple or #iphone or one of the other tags as shown at on the right side of the screen at https://kbin.social/m/apple
Microblogging is a separate tab from Threads, you need a Kbin account to start a new thread.
@feditips I was trying to figure this out all morning! Like, where do my posts go if I tag the community/magazine in a post. I assumed they acted like groups, but would start a thread with my initial post as the main thread, but this clears up so so many things thank you! So how can I test and see where my posts are going because I can't find myself on KBin? I haven't made an account yet. I'm trying to stick with this 1 account for the whole Fediverse.
There are some magazines with no listed tags, and I haven't worked out how they choose the posts in their microblog tab.
The lead dev said they're trying to get better documentation done, but I'm guessing they've also got a lot of firefighting to do due to the reddit implosion.
One account should be enough for appearing on a magazine's microblog section. You would need a Kbin account to start a new thread in the threads section though.
@feditips Oh! Okay. Now I wish there was a way to use this account as a kind of identity so I don't have to make yet another account. More accounts means more places to keep track of, and I'd honestly have one centralized login for all these services, but I think that's a far bigger discussion for ActivityPub itself! Lemmy seems to work very well but for obvious reasons I'd rather interact with KBin and KBIN users/communities/magazines.
Jerboa on Android may work, though if ya logged into KBin using Google or Facebook (Google in my case), no option to do so in Jerboa. I suppose I could do the ‘forgot password’ thing and make one… If It’d let me… I haven’t tried yet.
p.s. I don't think tagging a magazine does anything? I tagged the TIL group in my main post today but it didn't appear in the TIL group's microblog section.
@feditips if #kbin is already able to post content to #Mastodon, it would be very cool if you could somehow use your Mastodon account for signing up to kbin. To me that just makes sense since both platforms already have functionality overlap.
I don't know how technically feasible that would be, just thinking aloud here. kbin already has log in with Google and Facebook accounts, so why not Mastodon ones too? If it's not feasible, nevermind. If it is, that would be very cool.
I'm not sure what you mean by "signing up to kbin"?
Your account on the Fediverse only works with the server you signed up on, but your server lets you communicate with accounts and groups on other servers.
It's like with email: you can't use a Gmail account to sign in on Yahoo Mail, but you can still send emails between Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts.
I don't think Kbin has Google or FB login by the way?
@feditips as in when making an account for kbin for the first time, it'd be cool to have a Mastodon sign in option. There are already options for Google and Twitter. Since there already some cross-instance stuff going on that would be nice if feasible.
@feditips@cazzztle that’s always been a confusing bit for me. I had initially thought “federation” included SSO functionality, but that’s incorrect. It would be nice, especially with the various services popping up that are based on ActivityPub, but that’s not how any of this was designed.
@wholegroanoats@feditips Ah so it's possible to implement then! Cool. That's I was trying to figure out. I might add Mastodon SSO to the Codeberg repo as a feature suggestion then.
@feditips@cazzztle i think it’s a potential barrier to entry for users. from my perspective, i see a “service” as various platforms with a specific purpose. pixelfed for sharing images (a la instagram), peertube for video sharing, and mastodon for microblogging. whereas “federation” is being able to access content on other instances without having to leave your home “pane of glass”, ex: seeing kbin posts on mastodon.
SSO may reduce barrier to entry for discrete services if you want to use them.
@feditips@cazzztle I also am not sure if you can interact (post new content) to pixelfed / peertube / other fediverse platforms from mastodon (or vice versa)
@wholegroanoats@feditips Yeah pretty much this. I'm thinking about account redundancy. If I stumble across kbin and I can interact with kbin via my Mastodon account, I wouldn't need to make a kbin account at all. +1 kbin account server storage. Quicker user access. Win win. I think it's ideal to have a few accounts as needed in general for Internet services (i.e. one Mastodon account to interact with all Mastodon instances, one Kbin account for Lemmy and other Reddit-like instances etc).
@feditips User experience behind that federation is disingenuous at best: You can subscribe and "interact" from anywhere. Everyone keeps saying so, it must be true. But it isn't.
Subscribe to a kbin theads from mastodon. Now you get a firehose dump of every comment on every thread, chronologically, with no metadata (votes etc.)
If you can parse that stream, responding works fairly well.
Unfortunately, responding is not the same as actually participating. Up/downvote isn't a mastodon feature, so no voting or even seeing the votes. Same across other "federated" services.
To participate, I need a BUNCH of brand new accounts. Which part of "federation works everywhere" is that?
Off the cuff, it seems like the building blocks for account equivalency are in place. SSO + a modified account migration verification can create and maintain remote 'sessions'. That even lets my "main" server send me to a compatible remote client to do remote stuff with a simple hyperlink and OAUTH bounce.
So, I just discovered I can post into Lemmy and Kbin communities from my Mastodon account! Now, here the catch.
I cannot specify if what I'm posting is a link, video, etc. It's always the one plain text type, because these services don't take a risk to assume the type of content from a bare Mastodon/Pleroma post.
While it's bearable with Lemmy - people can click the link and all - Kbin is another beast altogether. When I publish something from Mastodon and mention the Kbin magazine, it's always gonna be a microblog note, no choice. It separates microblogs from threads, which, if you ask me, are essentially the same thing under the hood. Obviously, there is a high chance nobody will look into microblog, because the primary tab for any maganize is "Threads", not "Microblogs". I sure hope I'm not posting into the void, otherwise I would need to make a separate account just to make threads work. 🥴 (Actually, no, I'd better ignore Kbin.)
I agree. I've done some testing and taken some screenshots as well as submitted an issue to the kbin Codeberg. Check these screenshots, I can see Lemmy communities just fine, in fact I have interacted directly with a post or two that originated on Lemmy all from Mastodon.
I am however unable to see any posts from kbin, or figure out a way to interact with kbin threads.
I gave #Kbin another try, took a less popular instance without Cloudflare, create a magazine with appropriate tags in settings.
When I go and make a post on Mastodon with one of those tags AND even mention the group where magazine resides (just in case), but nothing makes the post appear on Kbin.
You can imagine my disappointment, as I promoted the shit out of Kbin prematurely and how it's suppoed to fetch remote posts - NOPE, doesn't work. 🤔 😔
@feditips Hey, due to recent spam campaigns, untested features, and the lack possibility of quick fixes on the new infrastructure, the federation has been temporarily restricted. The federated instances are currently limited to kbin<->kbin and kbin<->lemmy. I didn't want to add extra work for other admins on platforms where groups are not well-supported. After the planned update at the end of September, groups will also be restored for other platforms, including Mastodon.
@vintprox@vintprox But wait... in essence, Mastodon posts should indeed appear on the microblog in the appropriate magazine (e.g. https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/microblog/newest). The condition is that someone from the kbin instance must be following your account (in the case of tagging). The limitation goes the other way (posts from kbin are not visible in Mastodon groups). Could you please provide links to the posts you're referring to? I will try to verify this today.
Right, so, I have this issue where even if I follow magazine's group from Mastodon, it does not necessarily trigger anything on Kbin to make the Mastodon post appear in Microblog section.
@ernest While I'm at it, I should probably report that there is some deeper problem with federating my magazine. When I open it through some other Kbin instance, its description gets wrecked: line breaks are stripped away. And for soem reason ownership is shown behind the first person/admin on the respective instance, which does not represent the truth (the owner is me, Jim! XDDDD)
It turns out that Microblog doesn't gather posts that contain extreneous tag somewhere around the beginning. I really miss the docs on this matter. When I include tag "#Kbin", my post doesn't appear in my magazine, but when I remove it, all is fine, post appears immediately.
What's the behavior here? I just checked and it seems that if I include extreaneous tag as the first one, post is ignored. When I move this tag after the featured one, the post appears on Microblog tab.
Oh, and by "extraneous tag" I still maintain the #kbin. When I try any other, it doesn't interfere and show the post as it's intended to. So, it looks like I cannot use #kbin hashtag as the first one specifically.
@vintprox@feditips I think @ernest may have mentioned it but it still follows normal federation rules. At least one account on the kbin instance must be following your mastodon account, otherwise mastodon won't send the posts to the kbin instance for it to put in the right place.
@feditips So if I reply to a Kbin post on Mastodon, will it appear as a comment on Kbin? I just tried this and it doesn't appear to have worked, but I heard Kbin was having federation trouble...
@feditips It took about 5 minutes to appear but I was able to comment on a post I made on Kbin! Now I'm seeing about replying to my Mastodon comment on Kbin.
This is a bit clunky, but I love this idea. I hope as the fediverse grows, the UX of this gets improved. I personally hate juggling accounts.
@feditips I did get this random notification for a post I made on Kbin but it wasn't in reply to anything my Mastodon account is attached to. No clue why this showed up
@feditips I looked a bit closer and it turned out my Mastodon was mentioned on Kbin, the web interface for Mastodon doesn't really differentiate between replies and mentions in notifications. I'm more used to mobile apps
If you want you can customise notifications to only show certain kinds of activity. There's a slider button at the top right corner on the web interface, and a mentions-only tab below that.
I think it will be good to have as many options as possible, because it's important to have alternatives if something goes wrong, and also because some people will prefer different types of group.
Perhaps the account you are testing it from hasn't been noticed by Kbin.social? Have you followed the Mastodon account you tested with from your Kbin account?
@feditips@ernest@TodayILearned Kbin, Lemmy, etc aren't making sense to me. Could you do a series of back to basics posts about how they work at all please? Apologies if you've already done so and I've missed them.
"Following the Civil War, the Pinkertons began conducting operations against organized labor.[5] During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businesses hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions, supply guards, keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and recruit goon squads to intimidate workers."
@HistoPol@feditips@ernest@TodayILearned Yes.
They still exist today as a subsidiary of a security company. As only the good die young, it's a testament to the harm they've done.
@feditips I have a question, because I saw a lot of posts celebrating Kbin's federation, however I am confused about how it works.
I seemingly can only see the magazines as Masto profiles, but I can't seem to get farther past that. Trunks fails to even load up the profile info, which is forgivable because it's new. However my fallback app, Tusky, can't load any posts either.
Are Kbin instances still not fully compatible with Mastodon? Is it the fault of the apps I use? Idk where's my issue '^^
@RoboticCreations You've only been trying magazines on kbin.social, I guess?
kbin.social is completely and utterly overloaded. It often occurs that it doesn't react upon anything.
That's because Reddit refugees pile on it like it's running on a big honking root server like you would expect from a mastodon.social-style lighthouse instance. Instead, it's one of the /kbin developer's five test instances and the only one that's in English and not in Polish. It only runs on a cheap little VPS.
/kbin itself is only five months old. The whole thing came up first in January. It's still an early alpha release and very very WIP. And I think it wasn't until May that it even had public instances. Test instances run by the developer for testing purposes and nothing else.
Under normal circumstances, /kbin would have taken several more months to mature some more, then people would have launched third-party instances.
But the big Reddit exodus started when all that /kbin had was these five test instances. And the Reddit refugees clutched every straw they could grasp without knowing how weak the straw was. kbin.social was one of these straws, and it was the only /kbin instance known to the general, non-Polish-speaking public.
That's why it's so overloaded. And that's why it often doesn't react at all.
Solution for you: Try magazines on other instances.
@feditips@ernest@TodayILearned I don't understand how this federation works cross fedi-software. Like could I follow a kbin subkbin(?) on mastidon and vice verse??
@feditips When I search for kbin.social instances on Mastodon, I can find the group, but they all show 0 posts. This is obviously not the case, because if you go to the kbin Magazine on kbin.social, there are indeed posts.
Similarly, if I look for a Lemmy community on Mastodon, I am able to see the posts from that community here on Mastodon. So, at least to me, it looks to be something on kbin's side.
Looks like it's federating, but some of the federation is broken? Not sure.
@feditips@ernest@TodayILearned are there reasons to run a separate instance to log in with? It'd definitely be cool to log into existing instances with my federated ID but being able to sub is still good!
@feditips Aye, I know that's the case with Mastodon, have been running blimps.xyz since 2018, I just wasn't sure how stuff was working with kbin and similar. I'll have to look into them, especially if either supports SSO via OAuth/OIDC, so I could potentially run an instance for my users on here ^^
@feditips@ernest@TodayILearned ugh. I didn't know this stuff. I think I tend towards the idea that the code itself is neutral (as long as it's FOSS) but this feels enough to make me look at alternatives. Thanks for the info!
Question: when I look at Mastodon toots from kbin.social, they all appear under the 'random' magazine. Is there a way to tag my toot to be categorized under a specific magazine?
You'd likely need a kbin account to start a magazine thread, but magazines also support microblogs. So I'd love to be able to post a toot to the, for example, m/gaming microblog instead of getting it pooled into the m/random microblog
Ahhh I see what you mean now, the microblogging tab within the actual magazine? Sorry, I am still getting used to all the features on Kbin!
I think I know what's going on...
Each magazine has a set of tags listed on the side of the screen, and it seems the microblogging section of a magazine displays posts with the tags that the magazine has chosen.
So, it's like the magazine has subscribed to hashtags and is displaying this feed in its microblogging section.
@feditips@atypicaloddity@ernest I've seen someone else tag the "account" of a kbin magazine (so @magazineName@kbin.social) and that worked to get it to show up in that magazine's feed
They did, but kbin.social was being overwhelmed with traffic due to the reddit implosion, so Kbin.social ended up having to use cloudflare which messes with federation.
Cloudflare is now off again, and federation is back.
I'm not sure if the problem is with how Mastodon treats groups, or how the magazine treats federation.
I'm guessing the magazine would have to stop federating replies, or perhaps better option would be to have an alternative address you could follow to just see top level posts?
As you say, a workaround for the moment would be just using a group-oriented platform like Kbin to follow groups, as it makes group management easier.
I have a few questions in case anyone could answer, how does the federation work? If I go there through mastodon am I limited to commenting or can I upvote/downvote?
Lastly: how can I follow the instance or specific magazines?
In case it's relevant, I'm using fedilab so it allows me to follow multiple timelines, but I've been trying to follow https://kbin.social/m/PCGaming
And I just don't understand how to do it
When you make an account on a magazine (I suppose that's how it works since they are instances), will all your posts appear on that magazine timeline? Or do you have to consciously send it there? And are you completely restricted to that magazine's rules even if you send messages to other instances?
I know it's a lot of questions, feel free to answer only one (or zero 😅) this is just everything I don't get for now
@elkaki You can only upvote with Mastodon (with the star), not downvote. With Friendica and Hubzilla you can also downvote (but I've never done this, only as a test).
You would have to copy the URL of the magazine/community into the search field on Mastodon, then you can follow it, etc. It also works with all other URLs (also posts) from the ActivityPub-Fediverse (also Peertube videos and channels that you find via #sepiaserach for example). @feditips@ernest
@elkaki Exactly, follow as normal.
The posts are probably not all federated with your instance yet, but the future ones should come in. You can also copy and paste post URLs.
Yeah, the upvotes from stars/favourites is how PeerTube handles federation with Mastodon too (so there's no downvoting option if you're using Mastodon).
The group will appear blank if no one on your server has followed it before or shared any of its posts. Once one person on your server follows the group, posts to the group from that moment onwards will start being visible to everyone on your server. (But posts made before that moment will not be.)
@feditips@elkaki Yes, and the ones that have emoji reactions (like Misskey, Akkoma, etc.) may all arrive as upvotes, even if it is a negative emoji like 👎 or 🙀 @ernest
@feditips I'm not sure yet whether they arrive, I haven't been able to test it with regard to kbin. But the emoji reactions are otherwise interpreted as favourites by all those who don't have emoji reactions. @elkaki@ernest
@feditips@elkaki@caos@ernest I'm not sure it works. I can follow Lemmy communities and get their posts (the comments at least), but kbin magazines remain blank even after new things are posted.
@feditips@elkaki@caos@ernest hmm, I have been following @RPG for a few days now and it doesn't seem to show anything. I boosted one thread I created with my kbin account and that showed up, but the magazine still appears empty
Kbin doesn’t have a public timeline like Mastodon does. Everything is part of a Magazine or Group which Mastodon doesn’t have. It’s a very different model from microblogging.
For example, from a kbin account while logged in to kbin, a person could have tons of content they want to see by subscribing to magazines without ever subscribing to a user account.
Fedilab, from what little I understand, doesn’t actually “follow” an instance in the strictest sense. It basically “looks” at the other instance’s public, local timeline similar to what you would see from a browser that opened up the site (without being logged in to that site) and pulls from there.
While kbin will show you content if you open the site in a browser, that’s not a “public timeline” like Mastodon’s.
Upvotes are actually not specifically defined in Activity Pub. Kbin and Lemmy use “Likes/Favorites/Stars” on a thread/post for upvotes. Downvotes don’t exist at all in the specification so Mastodon and other platforms can’t understand them at all.
One thing, similar to what I said here https://mastodon.online/@elkaki/110548671107228739
Are you following the magazine as if it were a user instead of an instance? Wouldn't that completely fill your timeline since there is no algorithm and you would be shown all the posts?
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