kbin.social is getting the hug of death right now, consider signing up for another instance

crumblebuck, 10 months ago

FYI: If you've got some spare cash - consider buying Kbin/Ernest a coffee! Servers ain't cheap - but maybe he can pour the coffee into them to speed them up.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kbin

AnakinSandlover, 10 months ago

Thank you for the link!

!deleted110152, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

deleted_by_author

SFaulken, 10 months ago

Release the Schmoo!

4Satx, 10 months ago

The hard part is putting the magic smoke back inside.

SirD_P, 10 months ago

another Reddit refugee here .. just bought Ernest a coffee .. those sysadmins/internet warriors out there can't run w/o some good coffee!

snowmyr, 10 months ago

I didn't know Kbin ran on Java.

robcee, 10 months ago

yuh banned

skulblaka, 10 months ago

On some level everything on the internet runs on Java. And Adderall.

1chemistdown, 10 months ago

Done.

embecile, 10 months ago

Does anyone know how to include spoiler tags, mouseover text, or otherwise make text hidden unless someone affirmatively clicks on it or chooses to see it? Something along the lines of Reddit's >!spoiler!< syntax.

ForestOfHandsNTeeth, 10 months ago

Thank you so much for this!!! I was seriously struggling to get around on .social, wondering if the influx of reddit users was crashing servers

!deleted120991, 10 months ago

deleted_by_author

themadcodger, 10 months ago

It really is an awesome idea. And once the dust settles, your "Reddit" account (here on kbin) will be able to talk seamlessly with other "Reddit" servers as well as "Twitter" and "YouTube". We're at the start of making something great!

Polkira, 10 months ago

Hey just wondering what the "youtube" equivalent is, I haven't heard of that one yet.

nanobot567, 10 months ago

Probably PeerTube

cjerrington, 10 months ago

PeerTube is the "youtube" equivalent. Runs on the same federation/federated system and ActivityPub technology.

A great common instance is TILVids.

Just like Mastodon there are content specific servers, to general ones, but they can all "talk" together, or from a Mastodon account can subscribe to a peertube account. I'm sure you can subscribe the to peertube accounts here on kbin eventually and once the federation settles back out.

mitexleo, 10 months ago

The interesting thing is you can follow a peertube channel and watch videos directly from Mastodon (and Pixelfed in the future) ...

Ashley, 10 months ago

That’ll be great. We’re looong overdue for a YouTube replacement.

deathbysnusnu, 10 months ago

So I signed up here and tried to log in on fedia.io but it said wrong credentials. Do I just need to wait for something to sync?

Spaghetti_Hitchens, 10 months ago

You'll want to sign up on fedia.io in order to login there. So you would be deathbysnusnu@fedia.io. Once you're logged in there, you will be able to participate with all the servers it's federated with (such as kbin).

For clarity, you only have to sign in on your home server, not on the others. You access other instances through your home instance (fedia)

themadcodger, 10 months ago

If you're just trying to interact with threads over there, you don't need to head over there for anything, you can interact with them from here (assuming cloudflare isn't causing problems still).

If you're trying to make that your home instance, then you'll need to register over there and then you can interact with posts here (again assuming cloudflare isn't still causing problems)

Captain_Shoe, 10 months ago

I can't see the threads from fedia.io on kbin.social. How does one see them without going to fedia.io?

drstupid, 10 months ago

I think kbin is currently cut off from other instances because they added cloudflare recently (I think to keep the site from going down with all the new traffic.) There is a message on the sidebar about trying to upgrade servers/infrastructure. I think they are working on upgrades and maybe the kbin code needs to be updated to allow federating to work with cloudflare. And maybe traffic will settle down.

So it should work eventually.

(Even posting this reply failed and then I got a cloudflare message, IDK how cloudflare really works but I don't think it's intended behavior. Hopefully just temporary.)

themadcodger, 10 months ago

With the cloudflare anti ddos on there's been some problems with federating, otherwise you'd be seeing some in All.

Otherwise if you knew the name of the community over there you could search @community@fedia.io the same with a user @user@lemmy.ml

BackOnMyBS, 10 months ago

What's the Fediverse version of YouTube?

themadcodger, 10 months ago

PeerTube

!deleted120991, 10 months ago

deleted_by_author

meldroc, 10 months ago

Oh, I'm stoked. Still technical difficulties, servers getting slammed, trying to figure things out, but this is how we escape enshittification!

Time to tell Elon, Spez, and Zuck where they can shove it!

themadcodger, 10 months ago

Exactly! Since it's open source and decentralized, no one can buy it and enshittify it.

That said, Meta is going to use the ActivityPub protocol with their Barcelona app, which means there will be back and forth between Meta and the Fediverse. On the plus side it does mean big tech is paying attention to joining us if they can't beat us. The downsides are there too though…

Isadog420, 10 months ago

Will Meta be able to scrape federation-user only data?

themadcodger, 10 months ago

They're certainly going to try. One safeguard the fediverse has is defederating servers that end up being bad actors. Basically severing the bridge between the two islands so no interaction is possible.

themadcodger, 10 months ago

Exactly! I'm hoping that people with coding know how will step up and help contribute in order to make things go faster than just one person at the moment. Since that's not me, I've thrown a few bucks his way to help offset costs.

PineappleJuice, 10 months ago

Mind doing a quick ELI5 what you learned re. instances and how Federation works? I'm at work (nurse) with a long busy night shift ahead and haven't found a resource that I can read in 2 mins.

mitexleo, 10 months ago

Kindly take a look at fediverse.info (There is a 2 min video) and jointhefediverse.org

1019throw, 10 months ago

I did the same thing. People migrate to what is similar/simple/familiar. I went to Mastadon too, but kbin looks and feels closer to reddit. It's slightly confusing at first, so hopefully over time things start to simply for everyone.

HandsHurtLoL, 10 months ago

Your comment made me think of how The Good Place always starts out with the dead person coming to consciousness in a big room with an affirming message like, "Everything's fine." That's sort of what kbin needs for the mass exodus of redditors - just a landing pad that's like "start here" and helps get us up to speed super quickly.

Seiru, 10 months ago

Something i’m confused about, are up/down votes (or whatever the terminology is here) federated across instances? Or do threads/posts have totally different votes on here vs Kilioa vs Lemmy?

artillect, 10 months ago

Upvotes and boosts are shared with lemmy and mastodon (and other fediverse software with the equivalent of a favorite/boost), and downvotes are only shared with lemmy

jclinares, 10 months ago

Upvotes are pretty meaningless in the fediverse. They're just a visual representation of that instance's opinion on a subject. If you want to increase the exposure of a comment or post, you have to "boost" it. That will increase its notoriety across the entire fediverse.

princessofcute, 10 months ago

There's not a way to switch instances without just setting up a new account right? I know you can switch instances pretty seamlessly on Mastodon but unless I missed it I haven't seen any setting like that on Kbin

blobcat, 10 months ago

yeah, account migration isn't a thing yet, i hope it gets added sooner or later

VerifiablyMrWonka, 10 months ago

As a project KBin is about a month old. The fact that ernest has managed to make it anywhere near as feature complete as he has (and still have it functioning with 120k users) is mind boggling.

EDIT. Meant to reply to @blobcat below

blobcat, 10 months ago

oh, i used kbin's git page to find how old it is and it shows from commits from around 2 years ago so I took is as the time the project has been running

Brome, 10 months ago

AFAIK, one month ago was the moment that the project went to public beta.
That's when I learned about it, with this post:
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse/t/511/Kbin-Roadmap-2023

Exiled, 10 months ago

What I'm curious about is the account naming requirements. If I'm "Exiled" on here, do I have to try to create that name on the other instances, or can someone else grab it and appear as me on a post? I'm just a bit confused on how that transfers.

Otome-chan, 10 months ago

I think it's like email. You're @Exiled but you might not be @Exiled. If you hover over someone's name you can see what site they're posting from.

parrot-party, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

You are (@)Exiled@kbin.social so you have to include your home address to get the full name. I had to wrap the first @ with parentheses to escape it linking your name

rodhlann, 10 months ago

Looks like this is a instance browser: https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list

Not a lot of options there, yet, unfortunately

blobcat, 10 months ago

when the main instance is so slow that it's not showing up on the instance list lol

rodhlann, 10 months ago

I was honestly shocked to see so few instances! Really feel like we're getting on on the ground floor here haha

blobcat, 10 months ago

the project is around 2 years old afaik, but started getting traction just recently

themadcodger, 10 months ago

Honestly, about a month ago it was basically just Ernest making posts to himself. It has exploded in a very short amount of time!

Repressed7204, 10 months ago

I tried to spin an instance up all night last night bashing my head against a wall. the docs are not fully done yet, there's most of it there, but its not beginner friendly as of yet, and and no auto setup hosters like mastodon has yet either. I'm sure that's something that will change over time though and more people start helping out the project!

kbin-ax9-eu, 10 months ago

yea, I tried the docker-compose but something seems missing/wrong either in documentation or code and I can't get it running.
Also, it uses quite a few services that I'm not at all familiar with (mercure/caddy????) and I struggle to understand the architecture and therefore I'm lost :-(

I self-host Mastodon which seemed complex at that time but kbin is worse

lixus98, 10 months ago

At this time is like kbin.social is isolated from the rest of the fediverse, thus not visible from outside.

blobcat, 10 months ago

Nope, while the cloudflare protection is breaking federation, it's because fediverse observer hides instances that have uptime below a certain % (which I'm guessing happened to kbin.social from all the down and maintenance time that happened

lixus98, 10 months ago

Could it be that fediverse observer considers the now unfederated kbin.social as currently down thus not showing it?

LordofCandy, 10 months ago

If we have the capability should we boot up a private instance? I have my own vps but don't think I'd want to service everyone but I could pull my own usage off into something private?

jclinares, 10 months ago

Yeah, might be neat. If you have a particular group of internet weirdos you enjoy hanging out with, you can invite them to your instance, and set up communities there to chat about your shit. The cool thing is that it won't cost you the ability to interact with kbin, lemmy, or the rest of the fediverse. You just have to do an extra hop, from your own instance.

If you do end up setting it up and making it work, can you teach me? xD I have the inclination, but not the technical know-how, lol.

bryanuc, 10 months ago

This is the part I'd like to figure out - if I spin up a private instance, can I precache / load magazines in a way that reduces the load on kbin.social, or does it just create MORE traffic trying to do that?

Hyggyldy, 10 months ago

I don't see how to sign up at Kilioa

AdequateSteve, 10 months ago

Same! I think they may have closed registration to help with the load.

lombarg, 10 months ago

I'm noticing that fedia.io is running even slower than kbin.social now

DrFluffyNips, 10 months ago

Alright so, I feel like I understand the idea of federation decently well between this and Mastadon, the "email providers" comparison summed it up really nicely. What I'm not understanding though is the difference between Kbin and Lemmy.

Both platforms can "federate" with each other, posts and upvotes/downvotes are cross-platform, and both use decentralised server instances. So what's actually the difference between the two? Is it literally just the backend servers and there's not really a difference to the end user? I've made accounts on both but trying to work on which to settle with haha

hoges25, 10 months ago

I’m still figuring this out myself, but I think it’s more like two countries that speak the same language. They use the same method of communication but they are their own servers and platform. Mastodon also uses the same communication method but because it’s microblogging kbin and Lemmy look weird when viewing from Mastodon.

So really you should only need one account on either a Lemmy instance or kbin instance because they are federated together, it just depends on which place you want to call home. Like choosing gmail or hotmail.

WorriedGnome, 10 months ago

@hoges25 there are some differences between the two. I believe Lemmy only does link aggregation (so a direct Reddit replacement) where Kbin does this as well as microblogging (so think tweets / toots). Kbin allows you to see mastadon toots and respond to them and mastadon can do the same. Kbin and Mastadon can both access lemmy too. That's the beauty of ActivityPub which is the protocol that allows federation between the services.

When you join an instance / server and create your username, you may find that your server doesn't have a community you are looking for. So for example, say gaming. You might hear about another instance having a gaming community that you want to be a part of. All you need to do is search for that community on your instance / server and then the instance / server will start pulling in that data for you and other users on the server.

I think it would be hard to create a UI that serves all the functionality of the federated internet. You don't have a single place / application where you can read a reddit post, create a tweet, post to facebook and upload a video to youtube. Think the same with regards to these federated services. Mastadon is for tooting (if that's your things), kbin for reddit like activites, pixelfed for instagram activities, peertube for youtube related activities etc. But if you are interested in following someone from mastadon and getting updates, well that's where ActivityPub shines. Getting the content federated and shared is fantastic and really brings together the ethos of an open internet that isn't controlled by one company.

@artillect @DrFluffyNips

stopthatgirl7, 10 months ago

Ironically, Fedia.io is not loading right now.

FuriousRaccoon, 10 months ago

Do I need to create a new account ? Or can I login with kbin.social account ?

themadcodger, 10 months ago

On the fediverse, your login only works on the server you signed up on, nowhere else. So if you want a Pixelfed account (IG) you'll need to sign up there as well.

What does get federated is all the info we generate. So this comment can be seen and interacted with from Mastodon/Calckey (Twitter). And Peertube (YT).

Ronno, 10 months ago

Give it some time, it is not easy/cheap to scale IT infrastructure. I can imagine that Ernest is feeling himself in an episode of Silicon Valley right now

Sirquacksalot, 10 months ago

So, I came here from reddit with the migration. I'm not understanding what any of that means. What is an instance? Do I have to goto those sites and sign up for accounts there? Should I delete my account here?

I'm very much not technically inclined when it comes to this stuff.

fancygoose, 10 months ago

Hello, welcome on kbin/Lemmy!

On the Fediverse you just became a part of, it doesn't matter where you register an account. It doesn't have to be kbin.social - the so called instances (different domains such as fedia.io) can communicate and see each other's content.

Just like an email - doesn't matter where your inbox is at, you can email anyone with an address.

Hope that helped :)

Sirquacksalot, 10 months ago

Also, I'm confused here. I wanted to make a new post to "RedditMigration" but it isn't creating a new 'Thread' (is that the same thing as a post?) If not, I didn't see an option to create a new thread, so how do I go about doing that?

Otome-chan, 10 months ago

Kbin has two kinds of social media posting. There's "posts" which go under "microblog". This is basically twitter and works with mastodon. To make one you click "new post". For the reddit-style stuff, you select any other "new" option.

BlackCoffee, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Hey!

You don't have to delete anything.

You can see it as having an @Gmail account.

You can only access it via logging into gmail but you can send Emails to people who also use for example @Yahoo.com.

Makes sense?

Your account is made in Kbin.social(which is an instance). You can access your account only via Kbin.social but you can use it to access other instances (for example lemmy instances and fedia.io) via this instance (Kbin.social).

So you don't have to make an account on multiple instances but use your account here to communicate with other communities who are not created in Kbin.social.

A community is the equivalant to a subreddit. On Kbin they are called "magazines".

Give yourself also some time to get familiar with everything :).

A fun thing to try is this;

You have an instance called beehaw.org. You can go to the site itself to check it out. It is an different instance that can communicate with the current one.

They have their own communities and if you would like to comment within those communities on beehaw.org itself you can create an account on beehaw.org and do that.

But what the cool part is is the following;

On your current Kbin instance do the following;

• Go to the top left an click on the 3 stripes.
• You get a menu with a few options and 1 is called "magazines"
• Click on that and you can see the magazines that are created on this instance(kbin.social for example)
• Type in "Beehaw" and click enter.
• you can now see the communities that are hosted on Beehaw.org and read/comment on them via the current Kbin instance and the Kbin account you created.

(How cool is that!)

themadcodger, 10 months ago

And to take it a step further, when the dust settles you'll be able to communicate with Mastodon/Calckey (Twitter) and Peertube (YT).

pvq, 10 months ago

What really blew my mind was seeing comments that somebody made from Mastodon.social on Lemmy. It's like seeing a comment from a Twitter account on Reddit. It's so crazy!

But the most cool thing I've seen in the Fediverse was some guy's blog that implemented comments via Fediverse instead of Disqus. So people could comment on that guy's blog by using their Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy/etc accounts. That's insanely cool!

themadcodger, 10 months ago

Oh that is cool. I hadn't heard of that one before!

MrsEaves, 10 months ago

Webmentions! I’m trying to get this working on my site as well. When you do it right, you can even reply back directly from your own site. It’s pretty wild.

sleepisajokeanyway, 10 months ago

Out of curiosity, how do magazines work between instances? If there is a magazine on one instance is it shared as a "tag" between all of them so all posts under that magazine would be handled by those moderators etc or would each instance have it's own instance of that magazine and moderators would have to have permissions between all 3? I think I understand the basics of how it all works but I guess I am not sure how magazines are handled with the ActivityPub

lixus98, 10 months ago

Imagine magazines as bots that just spit back whatever you send at them, each time you create a post on a magazine this "bot" just sends that post to everyone subscribed.
So for example if you have the magazine memes@kbin.social, users in other instances like fedia.io can follow this "bot" to see all the posts on that magazine, however users in that instance can also create memes@fedia.io and it would be a totally different magazine.

Reiker, 10 months ago

So if someone browses to https://kbin.social/m/memes does that mean that they're also seeing content from fed.io, kilio, etc? Or is the content split between communities? How does Lemmy fit into this?

This is the problem with attempted alternatives to Reddit/Twitter/etc. They're way too complicated and convoluted for the average user to understand and use in a satisfactory way, and so they'll never be able to effectively serve as a possible alternative.

lixus98, 10 months ago

So adding on top of that @Zak8022 said, users from other platforms can post on https://kbin.social/m/memes, so in that sense, yes on that magazine you can see content from other places on the fediverse like Lemmy, but this magazine won't show you the post that someone made on memes@fedia.io unless someone reposts that on memes@kbin.social, that content is split between communities.

What does this have to do with Lemmy? Imagine kbin.social as Gmail and lemmy.ml (a lemmy instance) as Outlook, you as a Gmail user can receive emails from Outlook users, and because magazines here on kbin are also like users, magazines can also receive posts from users outside kbin.
So if you subscribe to memes@lemmy.ml you will see posts from outside /kbin itself.

Zak8022, 10 months ago

No, in that scenario you only see the content from the one your subscribed to. I’m Reddit lingo, think of it like two different subreddits. The general idea is that one of two things happen: 1) the community end up using one over the other or 2) you subscribe to both and maybe each one has a different vibe since it’s possible the different instances have different rules and/or composition of people.

It’s not a 1-1 replacement for Reddit. But I sort of can’t be, given the distributed nature of the Fediverse.

Reiker, 10 months ago

It’s not a 1-1 replacement for Reddit.

What value is being provided at all? Who wants to browse 10 different communities all about the same interest?

The whole reason that Reddit is successful is because you can go somewhere that aligns with your interests, make a post, and get interaction from other people. If you split a healthy community up across 10 separate communities then you'll only end up with 10 dead communities.

I'd love to see platforms that compete with the likes of Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, etc, but all of these projects seem to get built by people who don't understand how social media works. It's a bit frustrating.

DrFluffyNips, 10 months ago

You could make the same argument about subreddits though. There's plenty of times were there's duplicate copies of subreddits (though with slightly different names), but one almost always becomes the "main" one, with the other just not getting much activity, or shutting down/merging with the main one

Reiker, 10 months ago

You're talking about something completely different.

Yes sometimes there are two or more subreddits about a similar topic. But they still exist on the same platform and people can access them from the same user account. And there are usually valid reasons for "duplicate" subreddits, usually when a community becomes very large and you get 1 or more new communities that focus on a more specific niche.

In other words, it doesn't really affect usability or readability in a negative way for the users. The platform is easy to use and understand for just about anyone.

A social media platform could have the greatest, most sophisticated tech in the world and it'll still be worthless without users.

loklan, 10 months ago

As I understand it, two different meme "magazines" on two different servers are on the same platform and people on either server can access both from the one user account.