Pssst... any ideas for a domain name for the new instance?

Hi there! I've been trying to improve the situation for the past few hours. I managed to disable CF Protection, and as you can see, I'm gradually allowing traffic from the fediverse. There may still be delays in deliveries and posts for some time. If anything is particularly troublesome, please let me know through the contact form. Sorry for the temporary blackouts. New possibilities have emerged, which I'd like to discuss with you soon. Now I need a few hours for a nap, shower, and I have to grab something to eat because I can't survive on bananas only :P

And look at this!
https://fedia.io/

Just please be understanding towards the new admins. This is still a prototype, and what we're doing here is meant to yield results in the future. I'm doing everything I can to get back to patching critical things in the code as quickly as possible. Have fun! :)

Oooh and You can send me your domain name ideas via pm.
https://kbin.social/u/ernest/message

mstrbtr, (edited )
mstrbtr avatar

@ernest While umbrella plattforms are great, if you want to think in the longterm, I wager this is something you might want to evaluate a bit. People may dissagree, but I think that in the longterm the fediverse will look much more like email, being a ecosystem of single providers, instead of a plattform consisting of many sub-providers, although there probably will always be space for it.

Umbrella platforms are great if you don't have a lot of infrastructure and capital as you can get a lot of horizontal growth without having to invest in it yourself. But in the long term this is a battle for the one big forum provider, the place people will go to have reddit-style groups in the fediverse. If you are smart and want to beat Lemmy to the dust I'd just push donations, and really build Kbin.social and make that your whole thing.

This is also way better for new people that are not familiar with the fediverse and instances, checking out Kbin.pub, which will make the onboarding that much more efficient than your competitiors.

This is also the direction Mastodon is going, and later also where Pixelfed is going, after I've pestered him for years.

Don't waste your time and jump over all the hoops. Kbin has so much potential, and going as the opensource hotmail/gmail "reddit" of the fediverse is the future! B-)

Anyway, I have great faith in you Earnest no matter how you do it. Go rock the world!

Kichae,

People may dissagree, but I think that in the longterm the fediverse will look much more like email, being a ecosystem of single providers, instead of a plattform consisting of many sub-providers

Allow me to be the first.

This is exactly the opposite of the value proposition of the Fediverse. It's going from the internet being 5 websites to the internet bring 5 other websites. It's merely and change in ownership, and that should be avoided at the ideological level.

the long term this is a battle for the one big forum provider, the place people will go to have reddit-style groups in the fediverse. If you are smart and want to beat Lemmy to the dust

This is weird corporate monopolist thinking, and it's a fucking mind virus. Lemmy doesn't need to be beaten. The Fediverse is fundamentally a cooperative exercise, and deciding that some other piece of software needs to be crushed to dust is not healthy for that exercise.

We don't need that shit here. None of this needs to wholesale replace corporate social media. It doesn't need 3 billion users to succeed. We shouldn't want it to look and behave like the purposefully toxic spaces, and we don't need to behave like the sociopaths that run them.

mstrbtr, (edited )
mstrbtr avatar

@Kichae Most people don't hate email. I love email. It's the most successfull, healthy example of a decentralized network that empower not only enthusiasts like yourself, but the average person.

Every time I get a response from people like you, I get reminded of how selfcentered some people are to their own needs all the time, or wanting to promise a utopia even though we have the closest example to it that we actually can promise to people.

And not only that, you are a part of the unresponsible and toxic part of the fediverse.

You are the problem Ms. or Mr.

Edit: Seems like people need to be reminded 24/7. Lemmy is run by tankies that suppoort Russia, deny the genocide of Uighurs, and sooner than later is just going to destroy their platform. Read this thread

@ernest

blobcat,
blobcat avatar

email is everything but a healthy example of decentralization, running your own personal email server is near impossible without complying to the big email providers like Google that will block/mark as spam your emails if you don't match their standards.

mstrbtr,
mstrbtr avatar

@blobcat that is the bauty of federated decentralization. Everyone can choose who they want to collaborate with. This will be an issue for you both with larger or smaller providers. But the reality is that larger providers will be easier for 'the common person' to use, whatever that is. But email shows that. And them protecting against spam and malicious email sources is a product of them being responsible. If you were to meet their standards I'm sure you'd be whitelisted.

I have an email with my fully own domain on my own email thing and I have no issue emailing anyone. Only limitation is that most email stuff don't work with the norwegian characters ÆÅØ for the adress and such.

@ernest @Kichae

missingno,
missingno avatar

I don't think it's fair to compare large instances existing to fully centralized platforms. I think there is a place for both large and small servers, we need both.

I love the potential I see in the Fediverse and its underlying technology, but I feel like a lot of people here have a hard time accepting that this is genuinely pretty confusing to the average non-techie. Anything we can do to reduce friction and have a recommended entry point for the average casual Twitter/Reddit refugee is a good thing.

It's not like small instances are gonna go away for those that want them. The true beauty of the Fediverse is that we can please everyone.

Kichae,

It's only confusing at first. But the idea that someone should understand something fully at first contact is... Not a good one.

missingno,
missingno avatar

Not everyone wants to dig deep into understanding everything, and if you expect everyone should have to you're going to lose a lot of people who just want to read the news and upvote cat pictures.

Kichae, (edited )

No one has to have a deep understanding of anything. With usage comes an intuitive sense of things.

Picking up a new technology and deciding not to engage with it because it isn't an old technology isn't walking away because you lack a deep understanding. It's because you want it to be something that it is not.

missingno,
missingno avatar

I think you really overestimate the average user. Most people genuinely don't care to learn or engage. They see Reddit is popular on the App Store, download it, upvote whatever's on the frontpage, and that's the extent of what they know. That's what we're competing with.

Expecting everyone who comes to the Fediverse to do a whole bunch of research about different instances in order to pick out the best fit, do you actually think that's realistic to expect of most people? Most people will just use whatever's at the top of Google Play.

These kinds of options are great for power users like you and me, but most people are not power users. Expecting them to be is a form of gatekeeping that will keep the Fediverse from growing.

Picture your most technologically illiterate family member, who barely knows how to use Facebook as it is. The Fediverse has to be able to meet these kinds of users where they are. Some people want a simple popular server they don't have to think about.

Hikiru,

Heck, I’m totally capable of doing research and learning these things, but even I prefer simplicity. Not everything has to be a complicated learning experience. Even people experienced with tech can appreciate something simple and easy to use.

masterspace,

This is asinine. It's an online debate platform not a nuclear reactor. It should be as simple to use literally any other messaging app or platform. Good software meets the user at their needs, not the software's.

mstrbtr,
mstrbtr avatar

@Kichae I must say that I am really suprised this is the one that has the most upvotes. I know most people come from Reddit and are like super internett nerds. But it is pretty disheartening at this is where the Kbin community is at.

I still have hope for the network, but it also attracts the worst kind of people to associate with as well. be it super right-wing people, or super anti-capitalist people, even like antisemetic, genocide denying tankies like the two devs of Lemmy, never touching grass and living in their own bubble, and the worst part, just really fumbling at everything they do, even as things manage to go their way.

I've been a part of the fediverse movement since the start, but it's sad to give so much and build so much for it to end up into this. Particurarly when I have personally put so much sweat and tears into it myself.

@ernest

Kichae,

You're sounding like you're pushing for the Fediverse to be an open source mirror of what already exists. Centralized in practice, and apparently at war with itself.

I can't imagine why you'd think replicating systems that are already abusive would be the way forward. Replacing the masters does not fix the fact that the system itself is toxic.

Outsider,

It's the nature of sites that use upvoting and downvoting concepts, upvote and downvote is toxic. Downvote especially. Talk about people who dislike replacing bad systems the corporations made, the toxic voting system these sites use is now being carried over to the fediverse. It exploits the bad parts of human behavior and makes the systems worse.

kjr,
kjr avatar

@Outsider I agree with that. I suppose that down vote just honors the reddit tradition, but it is something I would prefer to eliminate.

@ernest @Kichae @mstrbtr

FeelThePoveR,

I've disagreed with this when Youtube made the dislike change and I'll disagree with it now.

Upvotes/downvotes may not be needed in opinion pieces, but they are pretty necessary for any educational/scientific/news/tutorial etc. content to filter out the factually wrong answers so removing those will inevitably lead to misinformation being spread around. So in that context, an upvote/downvote system actually adds value.

It may be toxic in some instances, but there's really no better simple alternative (the only one I can think of would be extreme moderation, but that's a whole other can of worms).

nevernevermore,
nevernevermore avatar

This is weird corporate monopolist thinking, and it's a fucking mind virus. Lemmy doesn't need to be beaten. The Fediverse is fundamentally a cooperative exercise, and deciding that some other piece of software needs to be crushed to dust is not healthy for that exercise.

I hate to admit it, but this is my biggest mental hurdle for the future of the internet. Capitalism has dictated that in order to succeed others must fail thus far. I see the implicit value of the fediverse, but the value of reddit was it's mass (before it hit critical mass, at least). So I need to relearn that I don't need to go to one place for value.

Bloonface,
Bloonface avatar

The "value proposition of the Fediverse" as defined by you is something of basically no interest to people who ultimately want to have Reddit but not Reddit, who are also coincidentally the people most likely to be attracted to Kbin.

The Mastodon migration got screwed up by people pushing their purist version of decentralisation over decent UX, Christ help us if Kbin blows its chance in the same way.

masterspace,

This is weird corporate monopolist thinking, and it's a fucking mind virus. Lemmy doesn't need to be beaten. The Fediverse is fundamentally a cooperative exercise, and deciding that some other piece of software needs to be crushed to dust is not healthy for that exercise.

You're just ignoring the realities of network effects and crowd psychology.

Take one network and divide it into 4 different networks and the results produced will be less than 1/4. You know what's great? Common decentralized standards. You know what's not great? A community that's fragmented and impossible to find.

lol,
lol avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Spy,

    I really don't agree on the site feeling like a mess because of posts from other sites, in fact that's what sold me.

    As soon as I made an account, I was browsing all (m/all?) and the top post was from a lemmy instance. When I realized that was the case I got overly excited and hyped about the future of fediverse.

    I think having access to all the content so easily is a huge step into beating reddit and moving to an open web.

    Beasto,
    Beasto avatar

    I had the exact same experience and feeling. Kbin Letting me see different Lemmy instance instantly made me feel like transition was easier. Now if only we could see the comments from other instances too and have cross instance commenting it would be perfect.

    Spy,

    I was wondering about this, I thought you could already see comments across different instances (in this cases instances being lemmy - kbin) but I couldn't find a specific comment and didn't pay close attention to the rest so I am probably wrong.

    Kara,
    Kara avatar

    You can see comments from across different instances, I've seen plenty from different lemmy instances, but syncing seems to be quite slow right now

    Negative_Pair_5694,

    It should be that way. However currently it seems federation is broken quite a bit as Cloudflares' DDoS protection is active and requesting CAPTCHAs for a lot of connection attempts to the server.

    CodingAndCoffee,
    CodingAndCoffee avatar

    Thank you for explaining that. It completely makes sense now why the UI seems to support it but it feels like we're shadow banned in replying to federated content.

    !deleted95653, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    blobcat,
    blobcat avatar

    Exactly, it's what Calckey, Pixelfed, and even Mastodon did when their meta instances were being overloaded with new sign ups

    Bloonface,
    Bloonface avatar

    It also confused the shit out of newbies who neither know nor care what an instance is and find the idea too outside of their existing comprehension or level of caring to wrap their heads around.

    blobcat,
    blobcat avatar

    If it's too hard for you to click a "join a different instance/server" button and select any that's available, then I just don't know what to tell you. It's not that it's confusing, people just got extremely lazy when all they have to do is open of the 5 mega-platforms like Twitter and Reddit to access everything.

    Bloonface,
    Bloonface avatar

    people just got extremely lazy when all they have to do is open of the 5 mega-platforms like Twitter and Reddit to access everything.

    That's a funny way of saying "to an end user, not having to give a shit about what instance you're on is an objectively easier and thus better experience".

    Particularly when most people couldn't tell you what a server even is. It just makes them confused because it's neither something they understand nor something they're going to be motivated to care about.

    If using a platform feels like hard work compared to its competitors, that's a failing of the platform, not of users. Users don't owe the platform anything.

    I can guarantee there are also plenty of things you, in common with everyone else, simply do not care about and cannot be convinced to care about, and would similarly consider it an imposition to be required to care about them or be judged as "lazy".

    10A,

    Do you think normal people know anything about client-server architecture, or are willing to learn? A successful service must have a single website with a single auth system, with a domain name having few characters at .com, or a competing service will win.

    0xtero,
    0xtero avatar

    People may dissagree

    Yeah. People will.

    You propose centralization in a federated ecosystems. I don't really see the rationale.

    much more efficient than your competitiors

    I guess if you're planning to "compete", then you need to think about beating your competitors, but if that's the case, then why base your project on federated protocol in the first place? Why not just build something separate (like Tildes https://tildes.net/, if we're talking about Reddit alternatives) - and remove your project from internal competition from the get go?

    But why does it have to be a competition?

    This is also the direction Mastodon is going, and later also where Pixelfed is going, after I've pestered him for years.

    Once Meta releases their Instagram active-pub service, we'll have 1.2 billion MAU's hitting the protocol. You're saying we should all just go there and forget about all the other servers? I don't see any logic in that.

    lori,
    lori avatar

    This is the exact antithesis of the fediverse. It isn't looking to make the next centralized social media site. That's not the goal. Expanding one big site as much as possible is exactly what we don't want and isn't sustainable.

    wally,

    It would be really nice if @earnest added an instances page to kbin.pub that would allow folks to choose instances to join. Even if that means it’s more static/curated instances he trusts etc.

    threefriend,

    I just want to comment that it's so refreshing to see a post that's heavily downvoted but not hidden away. This just got me so excited for kbin. It feels like the old webforum experience, where people said controversial things and it sparked discussion and new ideas, not an echo chamber where everyone's smelling their own farts.

    I agree with the 5/8ths majority that's against you, and that isn't a reason for you to feel shame or me to feel smug. It just is. It's beautiful.

    Xero,
    Xero avatar

    I nominate trashbat.bin as per Nathan Barley.

    gazby,

    Infrastructure engineer by trade here, would be happy out with scaling up if I can be of use 👍

    tekeous,

    I started an instance at https://kbin.lol, but federation to kbin.social doesn't appear to be working. Would this be a firewall issue on my end or due to the Cloudflare limits on kbin.social?

    P.S. if this site is overloaded, new users are welcome at my instance. I'd just like to fix up the federation thing.

    arkcom,
    arkcom avatar

    I think cloudflare is ultimately compounding the problems. Nobody wants to join fedia.io or alternatives and be cut off, so everyone just keeps piling up here making more and more load.

    MichaelMrak,
    MichaelMrak avatar

    I support Your great work https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

    anthoniix,
    anthoniix avatar

    I honestly think it will be better to keep pumping resources into kbin.social. You can spam us to keep donating to help keep it up, I think it's worth it. It's hard for people to understand that you can sign up at multiple different servers, Mastodon has even understood this and they're going to a more centralized by default approach.

    Concentration is not a bad thing, we are still using an open protocol and can communicate with people who are using that same protocol. If we continue to divide it will make it harder for adoption, and less people will end up using these services.

    Bloonface,
    Bloonface avatar

    This is about where I land.

    It's essentially an open market of instances, if people find more utility on big ones - as they are very likely to, since being on small ones makes the new user experience suck big dangly balls - then maybe that says more about the general attractiveness of the fediverse concept to end users than it does about either those users or the instances concerned.

    lixus98,
    lixus98 avatar

    I'm still getting the CF protection from time to time, has it been turned on again?

    miroppb,
    miroppb avatar

    Still getting it too

    dichtbringer,

    same

    Kierunkowy74,
    Kierunkowy74 avatar

    @SceNtriC said Reddidn't and @noodlejetski proposed as well lawwsu.it

    These comments did not pass past Cloudflare

    GayBees,
    GayBees avatar

    I’m trying to spin up Kbin.fun as an alternative English speaking server hosted in the US to help alleviate some latency and share the load when the huge wave hits on Monday.

    As an aside, if anyone can help with ssl confit hmu

    Spy,

    I'm considering doing something similar but I can find very few resources other than the Admin Guide.

    To be honest I am considering hosting an instance just for my self and maybe some friends, do you have any idea how resource intensive something like that might be? For example I wonder, all the media and posts that exist on other instances, would they be duplicated on mine as well, or only what I and my friends post would live on my hardware?

    VerifiablyMrWonka,
    VerifiablyMrWonka avatar

    If it's anything like Mastodon is to host then yes, the stuff is generally duplicated down onto yours for caching/resizing purposes. In Mastodon's case it only keeps a configured number of days worth of the content but that can still be a sizable amount.

    Bloonface,
    Bloonface avatar

    If it is like Mastodon, then the more users you have, the more servers you'll federate with, the more posts you will pull down, the more disk space you consume and the more you'll have to actively manage your disk space and probably continually seek more system resources.

    I would honestly say to give it a few months and see if you're still here before taking the plunge, which as a side benefit will allow you to wait for more admin information and documentation to be created.

    wally,

    What webserver are you using. I would just reccomend NGINX and certbot/LetsEncrypt. Its dead simple and will reconfigure your site config with everything needed.

    https://www.nginx.com/blog/using-free-ssltls-certificates-from-lets-encrypt-with-nginx/

    0xtero,
    0xtero avatar

    I'd suggest scaling up this instance (to whatever you feel like is reasonable, regarding hosting costs etc) and working on improving the documentation for other admins who might want to spin up an instance.

    Close signups if you have to.

    I feel like running additional instances is just going to take up more of your time - instead of freeing you to do more development.

    But if you want to start new ones - the logical (but oh so boring) way would be to spin kbin.(pick|what|ever|TLDs|you|like)

    Bloonface,
    Bloonface avatar

    I honestly think that if you care about adoption of Kbin then closing down the flagship instance is going to be absolutely toxic.

    It was bad enough in November 22 when people went to "Mastodon" (i.e. Mastodon.social) and got turned away, it made people think the entire network was closed, and all the explanations just sounded like nonsense to people coming from Twitter who'd just heard about this cool Mastodon site that was going to fix everything.

    0xtero,
    0xtero avatar

    Yep, for sure.

    I just want ernest to be able to sleep and maybe get back to coding, instead of worrying about never ending scaling issues and server hosting bills.

    I know mainstream doesn't care/understand about federation or instances and maybe they shouldn't need to, but since this is the fediverse... would be nice if other admins could step in (and from what I've seen they have https://fedidb.org/software/Kbin)

    Kierunkowy74,
    Kierunkowy74 avatar

    National ones:

    cabine.fr (based on https://kbin.social/m/lacabine) and accordingly:
    cabin.es
    cabi.cat
    cabim.pt
    cabim.br

    another English-language one:
    boost.in

    A Chilean instance can nod at carabiniers too (like Italy)

    dragfyre,
    dragfyre avatar

    this guy is thinking with 100% of his brain

    mycus,
    mycus avatar

    for .br and .pt, maybe even .es, could be cabana (which means hut, cabin, cottage)

    sab,
    sab avatar

    My intuition is that Kbin shouldn't be responsible for running more instances than necessary - ideally, the running, administration, and mainstainance of instances should be left to other people (like Fedia.io). Developing Kbin while running kbin.social (and the polish instances) seems to me to be enough work already. :)

    I get that it's a lot of pressure on kbin.social right now, but in the long term I think having only one English language kbin-run instance makes the most sense.

    dragfyre,
    dragfyre avatar

    Agreed - ideally many people should be able to run instances, to take the pressure off the devs. I mean I'm working on a piece of fedi server software and I would hate to have to spend most of my time on admin business rather than dev work :P

    wally,

    Ideally he can add more instances to kbin.pub or something. I dont think there is a way to view all the kbin instances the same way you can at say...join-lemmy.org.

    fcuks,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    wally,

    This would be ideal. Heck even a manually curate list of servers and a magazine section to request adding yours if you want it to be advertised would be great.

    Sam_uk,
    Sam_uk avatar

    https://fedidb.org/software/Kbin

    P0wderedtoastman,
    P0wderedtoastman avatar

    @ernest coming from Reddit, I think what will make this platform explode will be its ease of use. Any steps you can do to help make the end user experience better and easy to navigate/engage with will help the platform grow.

    If the platform is not intuitive or confusing, the platform will not work in the long term.

    Maxcoffee,
    Maxcoffee avatar

    I'd consider advertising to help pay for it at least tbh.

    CatNamedShithawk,
    CatNamedShithawk avatar

    I’d rather hand money directly to kbin than have to deal with ads. Just my $.02

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