you have to be logged in to see that icon. I learned that as I was going to ask "what icon?! I dont see anything". I guess I was logged out, but when I logged in, the icon appeared.
This is good to know. This needs to be the thing that happens when you click the actual picture. We shouldn't need to know this as a medium-advanced protip.
Though I know they're still working their butts off just to keep the thing floating right now. Lots going on for a small team. One thing at a time!
The truth is most internet communities which found and advertise themselves as an alternative to Reddit die.
To be honest, there were damn good reasons why Voat, etc, died in a massive fire. The Reddit exoduses in question were from huge chunks of the userbase effectively being kicked out for being massive bastards/racists/bigots, etc. The communities that they spawned after leaving were absolutely horrific and nobody else on the internet wanted to go anywhere near them.
The current exodus is made up of actually normal people (at least, normal enough), and the reason we're here isn't just because we're all joined by hatred (weeeelllll... maybe a hatred of u/Spez in a lot of cases, ha!), but because we're genuinely looking for a better forum-space than what's been available recently until now.
Sure, there are similarities, we're still here because we find corporate control over the forum-space to be "oppressive" (just what an incel/racist would say, right?), but it's not because our views aren't tolerated there, it's just because we're really fucking tired of the cost of having somewhere to actually discuss things is that we're endlessly sold as a product, followed by our discussion area being destroyed by corporate greed. Over and over again.
The reasons why this place is getting busy is fundamentally different than the reason why the previous migrations created places like Voat or Parler, etc. We're already in a massively better position due to that alone.
Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats
I agree with what you're saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn't eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit. Memes can be fun and all, but sorting a lot of otherwise really great niche-subs by top of all time back there was often a case of finding nothing of value at all because there were 50 pages of fucking memes at the top of the list. Personal preference, of course.
There are fascinating thoughts relevant to this that could be explored when people have the technical capacity to catch up the software even just to the submissions that have already been made to the kbin software.
Like instead of just "top" and "hot" and "new" and such, there could be like "popular" vs. "niche", where niche is a different dimension of popularity. Otherwise, you get the same tired old cats & doggos that "we" (at least, as a community overall) really DO love to see, and that's...well you're never going to change people's minds, so good or bad, it simply is what it is, but it doesn't leave quite as much room to see anything ELSE that you ALSO want to see is the problem. But where there's a will there's a way!:-)
I posted something relevant in https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/113196/An-older-article-that-is-taking-on-new-significance-considering (also duplicating it in https://kbin.social/m/BestOf/t/113715/The-Ennui-Engine-or-how-chasing-short-term-gratification-drains-our) if you are interested. It's a wall of words but beautifully constructed imho, I couldn't put it down b/c it really piqued my interest precisely on what I was thinking. But one down-side to the approach that it suggests is that it depends on good-faith actors to always act in the best interests of the community, which lets face it, is never going to happen. So it's high time that we found some OTHER solution that may be practically more viable. Ironically, the magazine https://kbin.social/m/bestof really does look like one solution to that problem: it gathers the nuggets from across the site and places them there to be read. But it also requires far too much effort, compared to just clicking the equivalent of an upvote or boost button, to be able to rank content by popularity according to some other measure than just "cool meme bro".
I suppose you could also make an alt account, or even on your main, simply unsubscribe from every magazine like m/memes, or m/starwars, etc. By curating your experience, you can tailor it more to your liking. Although then if you visit those communities, you won't see any comments in those articles while still logged into that account, so it's kind-of a one-way ticket for it to disappear for you, not something that you can easily toggle back-and-forth depending on your mood, from one account.
I suppose you could also make an alt account, or even on your main, simply unsubscribe from every magazine like m/memes, or m/starwars, etc. By curating your experience, you can tailor it more to your liking.
Wait, doesn't everybody do this? Currently, my lemmy account is my "meme" account and this, my kbin account, is my "discussion" account where I try to respond more thoughtfully to things. (but I do more "subscribing" than "unsubscribing")
I think a lot of people may be less technically proficient, and especially if they are trying to perfectly replicate the Reddit experience it just isn't there yet. There are lots of things possible to do - use multiple browsers, each logged in to a different account, or the same with apps, etc. But one issue I could foresee with that is that anytime you want to block something on one (like a magazine that speaks in a different language), you'd have to replicate that with the other.
I agree with what you're saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn't eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit
It will be filled with memes, just like reddit.
That's the side effect of popularity. That's the "peanut gallery" effect.
The first people joining any media platform do it out of interest. Because there is the technical hurdle to pass. That's why the first subs you see are always very technical. First were /programming/, /linux, hardware, /java, then /atheism. Stuff that people want to talk about. There was no /interestingasfuck in the first days of the previous media platform. These misc subs appeared the last.
Now look at the avalanche of subs with zero posts we have. Theses subs are created for popularity, not by interest. They were created day one! Waiting for content. The writing is on the wall.
The "peanut gallery" joins in for the popularity, not by interest. It is attracted by the gravity effect of other people. That's where the buzz is. And the "peanut gallery" outnumbers us 10 to 1 easily. Once the platform becomes popular is when you will say goodbye to it the same way you said goodbye to reddit. You left reddit like many others because you spend more time clicking the minimize button rather than reading interesting content.
That's why we should not celebrate the rising numbers of accounts on kbin. Each more subscriber get us closer to the critical mass where the posts are not created out of interest but to increase reputation. You already know the process anyway, you've seen it in action too.
Eventually, we need to get to the place where we’re creating unique meme formats
I agree with what you're saying in general, but I really hope that all of the interesting discussion here doesn't eventually get buried by memes like back on Reddit. Memes can be fun and all, but sorting a lot of otherwise really great niche-subs by top of all time back there was often a case of finding nothing of value at all because there were 50 pages of fucking memes at the top of the list. Personal preference, of coarse
It sounds alot like your telling people how they should talk and act, thats not how the internet or social media works. One of my favorite boards right now in the fediverse, especially after a long day is 196. I would rather see 100 posts from 196 then another post about leaving reddit. And i can do that by filtering and subbing. thats how this all works,
I'm not telling anyone to do anything, I'm stating my opinion about what I think works and why.
Different things.
And since you mentioned 196. It's still a decent example. I have 196 blocked because for me it's just noise that I don't want to see, because for me the content there has zero value.
The fact that I can block it completely (for me), get the result that I want and yet have that not effect anyone else's use of it at all is literally a good thing.
I personally find the entire sub worthless because of the almost total noise to signal ratio problems there, but that's personal preference on my part only, which I'm entitled to and merely means that I don't personally find the place useful. Having these sorts of things separate means that it works for everyone regardless of their preferences.
Also, If I did still wish to see 196 occasionally, I can choose to either just go there, or unblock it temporarily, and nothing I'm doing effects anyone else at all.
None of this is telling others what they're allowed to do, it's the opposite.
196 is a practically random community anyway, it's chaos and there's no real way to "drown out" the content internally with memes or anything because the memes are just as much the content there as anything else could be.
As someone who was originally part of the Voat migration, I was very skeptical of the move to fediverse precisely because of how Voat ended up shaping up to be. Hell, part of the reason I'm on kbin and not lemmy is because of the huge pro-Russian presence on lemmy.ml. Not all of us who migrated to Voat during those days were bigoted, or had actively hateful views towards certain groups of people, and early Voat wasn't a total right wing cesspool. I simply wanted to support a grassroots platform that promised to provide an alternative to what was then becoming a highly centralized platform. Ultimately the worst of the worst won out over the reasonable people who were there, and the myriad of technical failings on the web host's part made us regret being there, and it's ultimately why I abandoned the platform.
I still fear that happening with kbin, but because of the different circumstances of the current migration, the nature of the fediverse, and the more diverse make up of people on this site, we are at least in less danger of the crazies running the show. My biggest fear is this site failing on the technological front, as there are still many aspects that feel unfinished, and with the recent situation on lemmy.world with user LMAO, there are still a lot of fundamental problems with the site that could be its downfall if not swiftly addressed.
Yeah that's a fair point. For me it was the constant twitter screenshots/ tiktok reposts and repeated and shallow discussion of whatever bullshit fill in the blank political figure/ tech billionaire was doing that was killing the fun for me. I really think memes were more fun back in 2012-~2018 or so, mostly because there seemed to be more emphasis on novelty, but the endless soyjack reposts or dead tv show memes (cough the office) were definitely getting stale. I think it works better when memes are on hobby/niche subreddits because I think they invited discussion in the comments, but man are they useless on anything related to current events. Some subreddits did it really well though, places like noncredibledefense (that's the only one I can think of rn) really had a unique voice and were making new formats.
I found that, for me at least, memes on reddit were generally a negative aspect in most subs focussed on discussion.
They worked really well though when you had the main sub basically ban memes, but spawn a secondary sub specifically for them.
You get the best of both worlds there, where people can either take them or leave them, and the main sub doesn't end up with a massive noise to signal problem.
+1 I really want this, separate communities for memes and for content. I really enjoy spending time scrolling through memes, and I want that to exist somewhere - but not in the same place as the actual content. I hope that becomes the standard here, and also that people start making more meme-focused communities, cos I haven't seen many yet.
Yeah, /r/AnarchyChess wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is now if memes were allowed on /r/chess. Splitting the memes and discussion apart is definitely the best way to go.
There was a fascinating point on fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu where it felt like a narrative type was getting created. New characters and kinds of story lines were popping up all over. It was kind of amazing.
I have really fond memories of those old rage comics, they're part of what got me to make an account in the first place. I know they've grown corny as they've aged, but gee so have I. I think most places online can't really replicate the kind of communal rush to engage in the community, I think we've all grown a mite cynical.
Seems just like another day with open source software.
You gotta be careful about licensing and attribution and it can get really messy, but no big deal really.
Seems like you're correcting this and acting in good faith.
It shouldn't happen, but it happens. Thanks for the transparency
There have been fixes submitted by volunteers, but I don't think they've been reviewed and approved. And I don't think there have been any new releases.
Hopefully things pick up speed now that Ernest has a server admin to look after things here
You can have a look here to see a test instance with some of the things that are coming, Ernest (the admin) has been merging in a range of tickets including bug fixes, UI improvements and other bits.
There seems to be an ever growing backlog of feature requests and bug fixes in the issues list but a fair bit is getting sorted out behind the scenes.
There's several of us now with kbin installed locally and a decent dev chat channel that's pretty busy. I think so the end it's still him physically marking PRs as approved and merging it in / deploying, but at least there's a few contributors now :)
Yeah there are a bunch of us in the dev chat now. Some of us have set up our additional kbin instances such as myself. I’m still looking through the code and getting up to speed but hope to contribute to the main code base soon. (Right now I’m experimenting with some features I wrote on my instance)
So yes, it’s mainly been Ernest up until this point but he is starting to get additional support from the community :)
Thank you! I’m excited to see the site grow as well. We seem to be building a nice place to hangout and have good discussions unlike the site that shall not be named.
Yes, there is a very strong team there now, and I will gradually delegate responsibility in certain areas. I need to focus on my own milestones. However, I want to do it slowly because there are many pitfalls here that are a consequence of kbin being a side project. But the organization on Matrix was amazing, and I didn't even lift a finger for it.
I'm very much enjoying your side project, and we all appreciate all the effort you've put in as we've stressed it to (and no doubt beyond!) It's design limits.
I also appreciate the way you pop up and contribute to random threads!
Your level of engagement with the community is absolutely spectacular. I'm glad to have found myself a cozy little Internet space and wish you the best of luck with this one hell of a side project!
@ernest I can't imagine how stressful it is for you. I've run a few larger projects (ShowEQ back in the day, being one of the bigger ones), but nothing that blew up so quickly like Kbin has and I don't envy your position. I really appreciate the work you've put into KBin and I want to see it succeed!
But I get it, without an official API, it's a lot of work to get one going. I just refuse to use Lemmy, so I'm committed on getting a Kbin app ASAP. We're just about to have alpha.1 build ready and it's pretty darn usable.
EDIT: me not going w Lemmy was due to devs. I still think it’s a viable platform for the fediverse, especially with all the instances out there besides theirs (and being open source). Kbin being completely separated just felt like the right choice for me when picking between the two.
I've seen that "problem" a lot, but they give away the source code for free as proper communists should do, and then it's out of their hands. Just don't go to lemmygrad.ml.
I signed up for kbin because it was easier to understand. Lemmy looked neat but figuring out which instance to join was hard. As for the developers supporting China… well, Lemmy is open source and the whole point is to make something where you don’t have to agree with the people running it.
Lemmy looked neat but figuring out which instance to join was hard
how about any lol, any major instance is ok
and yeah lemmy is open source, there's a lemmy instance for every point on the political spectrum, devs being commies makes no difference for the end result which is a very diverse (fe)diverse
There are alleged members of the communist party who are mods at lemmy.ml, or some kind of Chinese state apologists. Those who seek freedom of speech should be forewarned of this.
Gotta say, I'm really excited for the work you're doing on Artemis. Kbin's mobile site is really good especially considering how young it is, but I miss the smoothness of a real app. Thank you for jumping in on it so quickly and enthusiastically!!
Yeah, following along the active PR for the site’s API closely :)
Rn using homegrown one based on their DTOs. Using a scrapper. Just so we can run a small scale private beta. Has help us get a lot of the core functionality in place. Currently the app is looking pretty good.
While not mentioned in the list and no code was actually written towards Kbin yet, I do plan to support it and Mastodon if possible on Beyond when possible :)
tl;dr: It's Mastodon. You can use Mastodon from Kbin.
The Microblog tab shows posts from Kbin + Mastodon, just like how the Threads tab shows posts from Kbin + Lemmy. So if you have people you like on Mastodon, search for them using the little magnifying glass and then follow them from Kbin. Their posts will appear in the Microblog tab.
Additionally, if people on Mastodon use a #hashtag for something, it'll automatically be sorted in magazines that care about that hashtag. This means if you follow someone and that person uses a hashtag, their post will be placed in the "Microblog" tab of whatever magazine relates to that hashtag. This allows other people to discover the person you're following through shared interests.
Magazine moderators determine what hashtags they want included in their magazine - so @Futurology has said "We would like all posts with #research to show up in our microblog section". (You can go to @Futurology directly to see what hashtags the mod team thinks are relevant.)
If no hashtags are used on a post (or none of them match any magazines), then it goes to the magazine @random.
Wanna write a tweet/toot from right here on Kbin? Put it in a microblog. Use #hashtags to organize it into a magazine, or use the dropdown on Kbin to pick a magazine manually.
People can follow your Kbin profile from Mastodon. They'll see microblogs as a Mastodon toot, and "boosts" as basically Mastodon's version of retweets. People on Lemmy don't see boosts, but will see microblogs as a "normal" Lemmy post (since Lemmy doesn't have a "microblog" tab).
(Note that it seems things which come from Mastodon don't get automatically sent to Lemmy - just microblogs from Kbin itself. That Internet Archive post I mentioned above doesn't seem to exist on Lemmy.world.)
This behavior is one of the main reasons why I chose Kbin over Lemmy; I love that I can post once and have my stuff federated everywhere else super cleanly and easily. Lemmy is a bit more messy when it comes to Lemmy -> Mastodon and the devs aren't interested in changing how it works (I asked before I came over here).
Ernest seems really invested in playing to the strengths of the fediverse, and the Kbin roadmap has him planning to integrate more fediverse services in the future. For example, Mobilizon support is planned, which is like a group calendar on the fediverse.
If @Starwars wanted to have a watch party for a new episode of The Mandalorian, they could (theoretically) schedule an event on Mobilizon and have it federate to their magazine as a normal thread. Then they could (theoretically) pin the Mobilizon thread and use the comment section of the event as a Kbin megathread when the episode airs. See https://demo.mobilizon.org/ and imagine it being part of Kbin, just as Lemmy and Mastodon are "part of Kbin."
This is a great explanation; I've been a Mastodon user about 6 months now and was having trouble figuring it all out. One question: is there a way on /kbin to see just the users I've clicked "follow" on? Or is it all doled out into magazines based on tags or random?
Yeah - if you go to your profile and click on "following" you can see it. I believe you can also see other's lists who they follow - here's mine: https://kbin.social/u/EnglishMobster/following
Part of who I follow are people I'd normally follow on Mastodon; another part are people who frequently use hashtags that I'm interested in (like #ModelTrains) and I want to see their stuff in magazines like @modeltrains.
Note that if you follow a Kbin user, I believe you'll see posts they make across the fediverse in your "subscriptions" feed, even if you aren't subscribed to that magazine. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of that, but I suppose it makes sense. (People you follow who use Mastodon only seem to pop up in the "microblog" section.)
This is excellent. Thank you! I genuinely didn’t get it until reading your reply. In fact, I was thinking of posting a meme along the lines of ‘I don’t understand how the microblog feature works and at this point I’m too afraid to ask’. No need anymore.
Now all I DO need is a way to save/bookmark posts for future reference.
Works fine for me? I even gave a link in my first post to a Kbin link working on Mastodon.
Federation is a little delayed at the moment because of how many new users both Mastodon and Kbin are getting. But if you give it a few hours (usually 4-6) it'll sort itself out.
@EnglishMobster@Hondolor@internetarchive Yeah You will see this message much later or I can reply from kbin.... meh. What I mean Mastodon won't pick up # something from Kbin, while Kbin will pick-up # something from Mastodon. If you follow the links you will see biiiig difference in search results.
This is a great explanation, thanks. Can I follow certain tags on the microblog side of things so they show up in my microblog feed? Right now, I only have microblogs directly associated with magazines I'm subscribed to.
That part I don't think exists yet. Mastodon lets you do that, but I think Kbin's intended use case is that you follow magazines which are a collection of hashtags.
That is confusing AF tbh. It’s aspects like this of the Fediverse that will continue to hamper adoption. If it’s confusing for tech savvy people, it will only be a barrier to entry. Little to no upfront explanation or tutorial is a problem.
Maybe that’s for the best, but without casual users this place is not gonna get much bigger; even with the Reddit fuck up / migration catalyst.
I might be here for the long-haul, but I see major gaps here. It’s unfortunate because this opportunity is somewhat wasted.
Imagine if your reddit comments could be read on instagram, twitter, and facebook automatically, and you could read everyone elses comments from reddit too! Not 100% accurate, but definitely a simpler explanation and gets people interested.
Something I want to point out is that kbin does not support authorized fetch yet, meaning there is a chunk of the fediverse (some Mastodon instances, all GoToSocial instances, and probably a few others) that it can't talk to. If you search for a Masto user or post and don't get any results this could be why.
@EnglishMobster This is an amazing explanation - thank you, I learned a lot.
Question: Magazines can pick up hashtags from toots/microblogs. What about the other way around? Ie can hashtags attached to magazine articles/links be picked up by Mastodon and other twitter-like applications? Ie, if I tag a magazine article with #startrek, will that article appear in the feed of any Mastodon user following #startrek? I thought that's what the purpose of the hashtag field was when creating an article, but it doesn't seem to work, based on some experimenting that I've done.
The other way around is supposed to work but is currently broken.
Bear in mind that kbin.social (the first general-purpose English-language Kbin instance) was created in... May 2023. Our Benevolent God Ernest has only been working on Kbin seriously since January 2023.
When I joined in June, it was mostly Ernest talking to himself, with a few other randos from Lemmy who were curious about this not-Lemmy thing. A couple weeks before I joined, Ernest was in here completely alone. Getting 100k people randomly show up a month after he released the first public alpha wasn't exactly in the cards, I don't think - so he's been putting out fires that come with "oh shit my little toy project now has thousands of people using it overnight".
And here I thought the whole point of being a benevolent god was omnipotence. ;-)
Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure if that functionality just isn't working yet (but now I'm confident that it will work down the line) or not an intended feature at all.
"Omni" for a certain definition of "omni" after all.
At a certain point you have to expect that he chooses to do it. After all, in Genesis (lmao autocorrect tried to suggest "Genshin Impact") creating the world took God 7 days (well, 6 days + 1 day to rest and admire). Surely someone omnipotent could've done it quicker - so it's either that or he simply chooses to take longer. ;)
We (meaning the whole fediverse, all instances) need to be de-federating that crap immediately.
Nothing good will come from having Facebook streaming into here in anyway whatsoever.
The Fediverse as a whole needs to be a separate place so that people can leave places like that.
Also, if Facebook is allowed to "work with" the development of the fediverse at all, they absolutely will eventually destroy it for profit. And "working with" it absolutely includes them federating with it.
When their vast resources are taken into account, and their existing userbase also, they would rapidly become the main instance (or collection of, but probably just one) of the whole fediverse. Once that's them, they can use that position to dictate terms pretty hard.
Before you know it, everyone that would eventually have come here are there instead, and they're now the fediverse. They can also fork the software and leverage their Dev teams to make their fediverse vastly more polished... No donations needed on their fediverse, less bugs, everyone you know is already over there... Seem familiar?
How does that effect us who aren't there, how isn't it just the same thing as now? Our fediverse dies off because the users leave, instances close down through lack of population/need, before you know it there's nobody here and the idea just dies.
Fully agree. The reason I'm here is to escape corporate shitfuckery. if you expect anything other than more shitfuckery from Meta you're either a shill or hopelessly naive.
The Fediverse as a whole needs to be a separate place so that people can leave places like that.
The beauty of the fediverse is precisely that it is not monolithic. Each instance can be different, have different policies and decide who it wants to federate with. Some instances will federate with anyone, some with most, some with a few, some with none.
The claim that that the fediverse needs to be a monolithic whole, where all instances walk in lock-step with each other is entirely at odds with the fediverse philosophy.
If this were just some problematic instance (or a group of them, even) I'd entirely agree with you, but this is Facebook, the damage that they're almost certainly planning and are entirely capable of requires (at least in my opinion), a different solution.
Please note that I'm suggesting this as an entirely unusual solution to a very unusual problem. Not as some sort of standard practice.
You haven't articulated a problem, let alone described how this particular solution solves it. Meta building a better version of your platform that siphons away users is a problem regardless of whether or not you federate with them / regardless of whether their platform is even built to support activitypub. Federation has no bearing on that one way or another.
I don't want content stemming from a place that's controlled by advertisers and other large companies. If we're federated with Meta then that means your decentralized independent instance would still have advertiser driven, heavily capitalist and consumer manipulative content domineering and running through its veins.
That's a specific thing that I've read many people enjoy getting away from when it comes to joining the Fediverse.
this argument makes sense only if you're talking about defederating instances. It doesn't make sense here. The problem is not whether we want the users of meta's instances. The problem is whether we want a huge corp be part of the fediverse. And why are we talking about it? Because people are trying not being naive and believing that meta is here because they liked the ideas of a federated network and want to participate. Meta will cause more harm than good as it has already happened in the past in different technologies/projects.
This conversation has been going on Mastodon for a while now. The problem kind of boils down to the following: there are people who think Meta is a bad actor and having the literal entire rest of the fediverse defederating is the best way of dealing with that. And there are people who also agree that Meta is a bad actor, and think that partial defederation is the best way of dealing with it.
Its really hard to come (read: impossible) to come to a consensus on this, because part of the argument about what is a better tactical approach depends on knowing how Threads implements things like account portability, and this is currently unknown. Most people even assumed that Threads would not implement this at all, but Adam Mosseri just announced that this is an important feature, so who even knows.
It's an unpopular opinion here, but I truly think Meta joining is being a little blown out of proportion.
The fediverse is simply not valuable enough to EEE. We're a tiny niche of nerds who all have ublock installed. Meta wants a low effort solution to eat Twitters lunch, and saw bluesky do well.
We could even see this as an opportunity to grow. You can join mastodon AND find famous people to follow. Thread users themselves may realize the moderation sucks and go elsewhere.
Defedrating at best makes Threads roll back their activitypub use...and their millions of users are in a walled garden again. We did it fedi!
The only thing naiive is the people in here thinking that defederating from Meta accomplishes anything whatsoever.
Oh boo hoo, meta's instance is shinier than ours, doesn't that mean users will leave? Yeah, look around, they already will and are leaving for Meta's platforms, they have more users on Threads in 24hrs than the Fediverse has had in it's entire life.
the defederation has nothing to do with "reducing meta's number". The reason to defederate is so you're not playing their game with their own rules. Fediverse will gain absolutely nothing by playing meta's game.
Everyone keeps talking in analogies like "playing their game" because if you said "we gain nothing by getting a ton of free content from Threads users" it would sound ridiculous.
Kbin, ~57,000 users in a few months
Threads, ~10,000,000 users in a day
I don't think you understand the scale of the dynamics at play. Quantity != quality, but even if Kbin were to take all of Reddit's market share, there would still be orders of magnitude less content than Meta/Twitter.
I mean, I'll give you a non-analogy argument. That "ton of free content from Threads users" is not desireable. In fact, if early reports are anything to go by, Threads is already largely populated by brands and thoughtfluencers, all in a race to the bottom to capitalize on mindshare in a new, unexplored space.
IMO, neither that content nor those users would be beneficial for the fediverse in the long run.
i'm not here for the ton of content that meta will produce. If I wanted this content I would had been there in the first place. It looks like somebody else is in the wrong place and is dreaming of a fediverse full of brands trying to promote their products and the influencers pretending they are real life advertisements.
No, I'm just not willfully blind to the fact that social networks are only valuable when people use them. Reddit wasn't great because it was a niche forum with a handful of decentralized tech enthusiasts, Reddit was great because it was a big non-gatekeeping umbrella that welcomed everyone.
sure. But reddit was very far from what FB and instagram are. The culture that FB and/or instagram bring with them, is something that if I liked, I would had been there already
Here's the thing. No matter what the Supreme Court says, a corporation is NOT a person.
Facebook/Meta can't be welcomed, it is a construct without feeling. It is a massive profit-driven engine with no sense of fairness or ethics.
Anyone who uses Facebook can be welcomed, provided they make accounts and instances. But to allow a profit-driven engine like Meta to run an instance? That's not a good idea.
I’m neither in favor nor against defederation, I’m fine letting the community make that decision. But if you think this is the argument being made you haven’t been paying any attention at all.
Something nostalgic and familiar about beta testing new apps, seeing the community grow, and getting 500 Internal Server Error screens in the process... I like it in a quirky kinda way
Right?, it feels rewarding to add the discussion, to help solve issues in the code (if you can), helping people navigate where they want to go.
At least for me, reddit failed in something, making me feel part of its community, kbin is succeeding at this so far.
Edit: Obligatory plug of other kbin instances for new users to join: fedia.io, readit.buzz, fediverse.boo,
By joining them you are spreading the load so we can keep all instances stable.
I agree, right after getting used to swapping from reddit to kbin, it felt more like I was part of a community! I like to think reddit was a large city and kbin is a small village that is gradually growing.
I'm really glad I took the opportunity to swap from reddit to kbin, I already feel happier on the site and I haven't even been here for a week. I definitely feel like more people should swap which thankfully most likely will happen as reddit dies down.
That's the same sensation I found with leaving Twitter and joining Mastodon. I found that I was more inclined to engage rather than simply read information, and it was more straightforward to curate the information and people I wanted to follow.
Completely the same! I now even run my own calckey instance and have lots of interactions. Also at almost 200 followers in just few months. Twitter felt like posting into the void instead.
What’s your reasoning behind avoiding lemmy.ml? Just curious as I’ve been trying to find my landing place. I’ve enjoyed kbin but have found it a bit difficult to navigate, whereas lemmy.ml and beehaw.org both seem pretty straightforward.
I've read somewhere that it's being run by "tankies". I didn't know what that meant so I looked it up and it seems that "tankies" are very militant communists.
The bigger concern is that they're very pro Russia and pro CCP, despite neither of those really being communist anymore. Two countries that are actively spreading disinfo on the internet.
it seems that "tankies" are very militant communists.
In the original sense of the word, it was specific to people who favored Soviet military intervention in Eastern Bloc countries. Today, I see it used on the UK political subreddits more-commonly used more broadly for people who are really anti-West and authoritarian far-left. Like, if someone takes the position that Stalin had the right idea and his vision of the Soviet Union was the right way for the world to go, they'd probably be called a tankie regardless of their specific views on the Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe.
It isn't used much here in the US, that I'm aware of.
there is an inconsistency I have noticed between kbin and lemmy in the format that such links are presented. The problem is in the exclamation mark. In lemmy it is required to show it is a community, however here it is not
For example if you write it as https://kbin.social/m/formula1@lemmy.ml you'll see it works. (Ok, the content is outdated because of the known problems but the you get the point)
Eventually I think migrating communities will be a simple task. I’d love all my favorite sports communties to have an active place on kbin.
Tangent: my feeling rn is anything completely non-political should be on kbin. I’m not bashing Lemmy oe anyone else for their political stance - I probably agree with most of it - but it’s also what a casual user is going to be turned off by and it’s not what I want to be a deciding factor in wether or not a community of [x] fans is united by. Maybe it’s just cuz I’m a casual fan of a lot of sports, and/or I am someone who uses sports as a means to escape the bullshit.
Anyways, a welcome sight to see F1 on Kbin. Now someone get the NFL and Soccer and I’m good.
Take time for yourself, I don't think anyone's going to blame you for that. And honestly, I don't have any issues with the current state of Kbin, there's a couple bugs here and there but it's entirely usable otherwise. Finally, I think giving yourself a deadline to resolve personal issues might be counterproductive and make you more stressed than you should be. It sounds like you're already taking steps to help spread the workload around, I would just keep spending a little bit of time helping out the team do some stuff you can't do until you're able to get a better work life balance or something.
I guess I'm trying to say, things are great to me and I imagine you're getting that unfortunate side effect of only having people who have something to complain about reach out whereas everyone who has everything going well isn't saying anything. So, in my opinion, you can stay to course (as long as it isn't killing you mentally) and I don't think the site is suffering any for it.
Ok, so in the next few days, I'll be testing some things. It might be a bit worse for a while, but it will definitely speed up the problem-solving process. I'll be grateful for any feedback. I'm unable to reproduce it in local/testing environments, so it might be an issue with the cluster.
Apparently, the error condition might NOT be dependent on idle time (a period of time without any interaction). — Evidence: Periodic clicks on a vote button, scripted at 45-second intervals, did not prevent the error's eventual occurrence.
This is anecdotal, but I don't experience these log outs on fedia (I have to relog like once every few days but that doesn't bother me, I assumed it was cookie expiry but maybe it has to do with server restarts or something). So I can understand if it happens more often to kbin social users it might be some other way it's set up like caching or something that others might not be running. Then again, without version info, it makes it a bit tough to debug so this might not be helpful, fedia could be running some random sha atm which might be the reason.
If I had to guess it’s probably the stickiness of the session (which user is assigned to which server on the cluster) that expires after a certain time which leads to needing a new login or in the case of the error page a CSRF token which isn’t valid on this server of the cluster.
I'm not sure if it helps, but I wonder if this is linked to the inactivity error.
Load up any kbin thread or main page, open a new browser tab in the foreground, me around in the non-kbin tab for 15-30 minutes, and return to the kbin tab. Now any clicks on 'actions' (voting, posting, basically sending info to the server) sends you to an error page. Whatever info you were sending doesn't register (vote count or highlight, posts don't show up, etc.
I didn't have any logout problems at all until maybe a week ago. Since then I've been logged out 5+ times.
Not a big problem for me, but I could see it annoying others.
Slightly annoyingly spending 10min drafting a comment seems to cause the same on occasion. (I guess there is no activity outside the edit box).
Fortunately if I get an error after posting, usually going back means the text is still there, then it's usually copy the text, click through to the profile of the person I was replying to and post the comment from that page. So far that almost always works.
Weirdly I don't seem to get logged out, just randomly directed to a error page when interacting (e.g. upvoting or trying to comment).
Edit: I don't think I can reliably recreate this issue...
I've developed a habit of copying everything I write before I hit send, because my comments tend to take a long time for me to write/format to my liking. Not because I keep losing it, but just in case.
Usually when it times out in the comments, I get brought to a page containing my lone comment box and a notification about "something-something, this page is federated, click here to return to the comments section."
So I wonder if it's really related in part to the page's continually updating federation making whatever you're trying to interact with obsolete. Though that doesn't make as much sense to me on our timelines as it does in a comment section :/
I've only had to dig around in someone else's profile twice, and that was because the notification's link to whatever reply you're trying to check doesn't seem to be mixing with numbered forum pages. By the time I check my replies, they're usually on a different page than I'm being linked to.
I don't think this has to do away with the numbering, it would just require a different method of linking (right?). But it IS one of the finer annoyances, and that I usually consent to scan/reread the entire thread looking for my avvie speaks to how stubborn I am.
I've had a similar experience. Only thing I can add is that more rarely even refreshing the page doesn't resolve running into an error page when voting on some comments. However, each time I was able to visit the user's profile and vote from there without issue.
If I can't meet the deadline, I will step down from leading the project and transfer full rights over the repository and instance to the contributors.
I respect you entirely but this is a bit dramatic. Not all projects can be on time due to complications and no one is asking you to step down. Please just do what is necessary - you're doing fantastic!
Everybody says that, but that's not really practical. It would be much better to merge those features into the main project, than to fork it and get stuck maintaining a separate codebase in perpetuity.
Now I will say that if someone thinks they can do a better job, they should sign up for the project and commit their changes to the main project, so all ernest has to do is approve it, rather than write it himself.
oh, i totally agree with your points and i think most of us are already doing that... i was being borderline sarcastic. now, that said, i have no knowledge of what prompted this as a possible resolution by @ernest and it's none of my business, but i can take an educated guess at the calibre of individual(s) that prompted this as a solution. sometimes you have to be a hard-ass if you want to maintain quality and vision (cough mr torvalds) and @ernest has made it clear he's too nice. :-)
Yeah, there is no need for "final solution" style accountability here. This was a project that a single developer was working on when the stars just happened to align and drive a lot of attention to it at once. A commercially oriented website in the same situation would struggle to deal with it and be forced to take out loans in order to expand staffing and infrastructure capacity.
The phrasing of Ernest's initial post suggests that there is at least one exploitable vulnerability that spammers are taking advantage of and can't be openly discussed until the gates are closed. I understand the frustration and optics problem that comes with "easy and important fixes" sliding on the schedule (i.e. the topic of the other thread), but look at it this way:
Ernest is too slammed with work to be consciously creating more work for himself.
He needs the spam and bot problem to go away so ASAP so that it stops taking time away from him. This includes the missing moderation tools, spam/bot campaigns that are operating at a scale that those additional tools would have difficulty addressing regardless, and the issues he can't talk about yet that were hinted at above.
If he is waiting to push out a fix to problems that would greatly reduce his workload, there are very good reasons for it.
If he is not able to push out fixes that reduce his workload, it stands to reason that fixes unrelated to them are also sliding.
this is certainly very very worrying. this sort of behavior has to be handled some way or another. @ernest.
honestly, someone like that has already shown they would not make a good moderator, they mass banned over something so petty and small, i don't think it would be unreasonable to revoke their ability to make mags for some time (or indefinitely) and give his mags to someone else who is more mature. he already swiped up some big name mags, do we really want someone like that running popular magazines? no.
edit. honestly fuck it, this deserves to be called out. @Deliverator, this is unacceptable and very childish behavior. you should not be running magazines. reconsider your behavior and grow up, please.
edit. looks like we may not have the full story here. @Deliverator, we would very much like to hear your side and your reasoning for this.
edit. i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. do NOT stoop to that level, do NOT contribute to the problem of mass-downvoting, even if the other person has done it, or you are no better and have no right to criticize it.
There definitely needs to be a set protocol to remove mods like this. If the user did something to be removed from a specific mag, that's one thing, but removing them from every mag you're a mod for is an overreach.
Obviously I come from a different instance, but I feel there are things that should result in mass bans and even account deletion, such as the use of racial slurs. Contact the admins and make it happen in those cases.
I don't agree, people can make mistakes, they are punished according to that mistake, and should be given the chance to be better. If someone is banned all across the platform there is no redeeming opportunity.
Not sure how you would say the n word by mistake. Sounds similar to Roseanne blaming her racism on Ambien. They can make another account if they want another chance.
Why do you think it's okay to ban someone from communities where they did nothing wrong because of what they did elsewhere? Unless it's criminal behavior that can endanger the site itself, like posting child porn, I feel like that's a huge overreach.
I asked a general question about why you think punishments should bleed out into ither communities and you just gave me an example of a conduct to which you think this super-punishment should apply. You didn't say why. Do you also think that every country should jail people for doing things that are crimes in other countries?
I'm 100% against racism, I just want to understand why you believe that someone being inappropriate in a forum about cars means that they shouldn't be allowed to discuss baking in a separate community with different people where they didn't say anything wrong.
My entire comment was the explanation why. Zero tolerance. No racists. Full site ban. No questions.
And since you want to discuss countries even though it’s a totally different league, yes, I don’t think a drunk driver should be able to get to drive in another country for a period of time. Yes, ban entry from murderers. Yes, a terrorism charge should prevent entering an airplane in any airport.
Edit: And to clarify for those that put words in people’s mouths, giving examples of things that I think deserve worldwide punishment isn’t even remotely the same as saying put gay people in jail. Get the fuck out of here with that lmao. Shame on me for assuming good faith I guess.
The only "set protocol" is that the protocol is up to the instance admin to set.
That said, it would be nice to have a standard place for instance admins to post that protocol so that everyone can see it and decide if the instance meets their standards.
In theory the protocol is to first report it to the instance admin and otherwise avoid instances that allow such behavior. I'm aware it's easier said than done.
Looks like he may have just been removed from his mod position on a few magazines, as his profile only shows him modding 14 now. Hopefully the other magazines he's on realize what he's doing and do something about him.
EDIT: Maybe not, I just checked the modlog, and OP was only banned 13 times, not 18. Unless 5 of those were removed and no longer show up in the log for some reason? I feel like there might be more to this story than what we're seeing.
Other people have also been downvoting the mod in question, but OP is the only one who seems to have been mass-banned like this, as far as I can see in the modlog. I don't even see any threads where OP or the mod have interacted before, so I'm doubting that this was caused by just downvoting somebody's comment.
Maybe everyone should pump the brakes on this witch hunt for a sec.
I don't think there can possibly be a justifiable reason he was banned from every one of that mod's magazines, and then for the mod to systematically put a downvote on every single one of the user's posts. Clearly they both did it, but still, not moderator worthy behavior.
at this point, i have no idea what happened, but am open to hearing the full story. i'd like to assume there isn't a justifiable reason for it, but we honestly shouldn't assume anything till we see both sides. like someone else said, OP has also downvoted all their comments/posts, it could have been in response to it, or maybe not. we need the full story here
The 18 number is the number of unread messages I had at the time. They were all "you have been banned." I just went back and counted; I have 18 messages (across 2 pages of notifications now).
It's possible that they extended the length of the ban and doing so gave me another message; the bans were all different lengths. Or it could be some duplication happening server-side.
i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS
Not to be a i-told-you-so but this is why you don't name and shame on the internet. You can influence a person but masses become this uncontrollable horde that does stuff like this.
Lol same here, I made a community and then realized it is so much effort to get it kick-started (posting a lot of content relevant content there continuously to attract people to join). So I kind of abandoned it and decided to post/comment a lot on existing communities instead.
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