@sarahgilbert has published an amazing post on the 8 year history of tensions between volunteer moderators and the company— with a great Q&A discussion
There's such a natural fit between decentralised social media (fediverse/threadiverse for non-microblogging) and the sub-reddit ecosystem. It's honestly a bit weird that there isn't more of a push to just get a migration to happen.
Yes, you need the platforms, but we have #lemmy and #kbin already.
What's missing, IMO, is an easy hosting service so that a reddit mod can click a few buttons, have an instance+community and donations portal and go.
Wie brauchbar sind #Lemmy und Co. tatsächlich als #Reddit-artige Diskussionsforen? Ich frage nach einer realistischen Perspektive. Wie möglich scheint es, dass größere Reddit-Foren auf Lemmy (oder anderes?) umsteigen können? Wie sollten die Hostingkosten getragen werden?
@mc@frumble Jetzt entdecke ich zufällig noch #kbin, wovon ich zuvor noch nie gehört habe. Scheint noch näher an #reddit zu sein und ebenfalls ActivityPub zu nutzen.
Ausnahmsweise mal mit ner Oberfläche, bei der nicht jede:r Normalsterbliche das Weite sucht^^ https://kbin.social/
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2937 the Lemmy devs' response to someone asking for machine-readable HTTP API docs is even worse than Website Boy's 😒 guess they don't want anyone writing clients for it
@LevelUp yeah not exactly best dev rel practices from Lemmy
i realize it's not trivial to either extract an API spec from freeform code or replace freeform server code with code generated from an API spec, but this is just rude
fwiw, competing Reddit replacement project #Kbin has some sort of API doc here, but i don't think it's backed by anything like OpenAPI: https://docs.kbin.pub/
I've been hearing about distributed Reddit alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin, and since Reddit has been imploding, it might be a good time to set up a public instance.
But the thing is, I really don't like the Reddit "culture" or Redditors in general. Everything about the discourse on Reddit screams "bots arguing with bots" to me — the same comments and opinions regurgitated all the time, daily. r/confidentlyincorrect and r/iamverysmart are not just subreddits, but a way of life for most of the commenters.
Even if you somehow fill it up with smart people, the entire premise of being able to silence someone by just clicking a down arrow next to their post seems... wrong.
@ada@malakai In addition to this, /kbin has not implemented down-votes (even though the button is there) and it's not sure they will. /kbin will also allow you to consume non kbin content really well (minus the fact that they are working right now to add Signed GET requests in the next release which should help a lot). #kbin
@feb@hamiller_friendica
ja, also #Lemmy gefällt mir ja schon ganz gut (und ist schön übersichtlich). Aber #kBin kann echt noch einiges mehr - auch microblogging und Hashtags bspw. (ist aber dafür nicht mehr so selbsterklärend)
jedenfalls sollte dazu auch was in der Fediverse-Artikelserie kommen und ich suche noch Leute, die dazu schreiben würden - zur Not schreibe ich auch wieder mit...😁
Hier im #JoinFediverseWiki wurde auch gerade der WhatIs-Artikel zu kbin ergänzt: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Kbin%3F
@feb ja, das stimmt, ich habe auch ein paar abonniert und mit Lemmy inzwischen auch etwas Erfahrung.
Lemmy und kbin sind soweit kompatibel und auch von Friendica u.a. ist die Föderation ja sehr gut und es können auch eigene Beiträge erstellt werden.
Was genau jetzt aber #kBin noch anders oder mehr kann als #Lemmy habe ich noch nicht durchschaut.
kBin ist schon noch etwas komplexer, hier das fand ich interessant: https://blahaj.zone/notes/9fgc8wqewv @hamiller_friendica
The lemmyverse sounds perfect, but it ignores alternatives like kbin etc. It would be better if we didn't end up with the situation we have with Mastodon where people assume Mastodon is the fediverse....
I've been on #Lemmy for a few months, but I'm just becoming aware of #kbin, which looks pretty cool as a content aggregator and micro-blogging hybrid platform! Has anyone messed with it enough to have an opinion yet?
Also, I just discovered you can subscribe to kbin magazines on Lemmy as if it were a community. I'm assuming this works in reverse. The fediverse rocks.
@ADHDefy I have bin in #Kbin since a couple of days and I am quite happy with both, aggregator and microblogging.
About the subscription from Kbin to Lemmy communities, it works quite well. The same about subscription and publication in groups of a.gup.pe
It doesn't have yet an android app, but the mobile browser app is OK.
In Kbin I am @kjr
The growth of our lemmy instance, without any advertising or spruiking. It was spun up as a test more than anything else, but it seems that it has become more than that!
Even though the graph shows the growth spike from April to June, in reality it's even more stark than that. We have gone from 20 users to 100 users in a week!
We'll be spinning up a kbin instance soon too, and when we do, we might shut down registration on the lemmy instance. We'll keep them up for now though, given the load on lemmy.ml from reddit migrations
catching up on the little reddit to lemmy migration thats happening and so cool to see all sorts of people joining the fediverse not even realizing it. that they can be followed and interacted with by the whole fediverse and not just lemmy is the most striking part of this situation though this is like a side note or added feature in a list of "reddit alternatives"
@liaizon I have created accounts on #kbin and #lemmy, and although I have followed both of them with my #calckey and #mastodon accounts and vice versa, I don't feel like I am seeing any of my activities with one on the other.
the federated / global feed does more than the single reddit server could.
reddit will only tell you what's on its own domain, what it's own users post. It can't automatically pull from, say, hacker news.
#Lemmy / #Kbin will tell you what's on the front page of /other/ servers, that at least one of the people on your server is following.
so it's not overwhelmingly everything, but there's still that serendipity - it's not just your own server, it's your server AND its neighbors' interesting content.
So, after Reddit- it looks like it's time to try Lemmy? I haven't joined an instance yet though I've been looking around. Also, is there a way to see all posts from different instances at once? That might be a naive question but I can't really tell from browsing instance views.
Welcome to another edition of The Roundup! I’ve mentioned this blog post by Signal a few times before, and will do so again. One of the reasons why I think it is so relevant, is that it shows how the same communication platform is used it wildly different ways in different geographical regions, with people often not even realising that this happens. This already happens when everyone uses the same app, Signal. I’ve pointed out before that this effect must therefore be even stronger on the fediverse, where people are not even using the same app.
This differentiation in the fediverse is starting to play out in more and more pronounced ways. For most fediverse users in the Western world, the fediverse is tightly linked with Mastodon. But the Japanese fediverse community is growing extremely rapidly, mainly using Misskey. It has grown in less than half a year from 75k accounts to 325k accounts. Not only that, people on misskey.io love to post. Compared to Mastodon’s biggest server, mastodon.social, people on misskey.io post 12 times as much!
The language barrier between English and Japanese contributes that these groups do not overlap much, with people often not really knowing what happens at the other side. Still, if you want to understand the fediverse, its getting harder and harder to ignore Misskey. We used to have a moment where people referred to Misskey and Calckey as *key, but with Calckey getting a rebranding and name change soon, the field of fediverse microblogging clients keep expanding.
Discussion platforms
Beyond the expanding scene of microblogging services is the field of forums and link aggregators. Reddit’s changes to their API pricing, effectively killing 3rd party apps, has a lot of people upset, and some are looking for new places to go.
Lemmy is one of the main recipients of the new inflow of people. As an illustration, Beehaw.org is a small Lemmy community that is focusing on being a safe and diverse place. They have had to restrict signups after their user base doubled in the last few days. Lemmy has an Android client, and an iOS client that entered TestFlight beta a few weeks ago. Another project to work on a read-only client for Lemmy is underway as well. Lemmy is not without controversy though; the large account FediTips voiced their concern about the politics of the developers, regarding the denial of human rights abuses. As one of the largest Lemmy server explicitly states that they like Stalin, and some developers of Lemmy associate with this server, it is understandable that people are hesitant to recommend Lemmy. For a more in-depth article regarding this, as well as the context where this happens regarding Reddit’s changes, as well as the potential for Kbin in this, I recommend this article by @jayeless.
Forum software Discourse has been working on a plugin to enable federation, and the first version of this is available. As of now, it only publishes a note to the rest of the fediverse when a new topic is created, and does not allow for the federation of comments yet. The ActivityPub Social Hub is one of the first forums to make use of this functionality, so you can now easily see on your fediverse account when new topics are created.
The links
Mastodon is featured on the Apple App Store. It describes Mastodon in fairly good detail, and links to popular client apps such as Ivory and Mona.
Trunks is a Mastodon app for iOS, Android and web client, and after 5 months in beta has now officially been released.
An excellent article that goes into the details of making an app for the fediverse, and the practical complications with interoperability. While in theory all apps should talk with each other via ActivityPub, getting the details correct for the implementation turns out to be quite a bit more complicated.
Web browser Vivaldi has been running their own Mastodon server for a while now. In a new interview, the CEO talks more about federation and running their own server.
An overview of the top 30 most popular servers that relate to the fediverse in some way. This list takes the widest possible interpretation of fediverse. Quite a few people will disagree with including Truth Social on the list for example, as it does not federate. I personally see this list as a good overview of what is out there, even though I hold a narrower definition of fediverse.
Bonfire is a microblogging client that is still in alpha testing, that focuses on circles and boundaries. A new blog post explains their thinking in more detail.
Calckey has the feature to add plugins. This is barely used, as their is little documentation on how to make plugins. Jeff Sikes has been building plugins, and documenting the process on how to make them.
Owncast celebrates its 3 year anniversary with a major update.
PixelFed has updated their onboarding process for new users. One notable thing is that they use the word ‘communities’ to describe servers/instances. Personally I think that is a great term that makes it easier for new users to understand what is going on with federation.
John Gruber might have some mixed feelings on Mastodon (stating last month that Mastodon is doomed to relative obscurity, compared to Bluesky), but still implemented federation for his blog Daring Fireball.
Beyond the fediverse
Quite a lot of news this week that is not directly about the fediverse, but still relates to it in some way.
On Bluesky: This article by The Intercept answers some basic questions about Bluesky in an detailed manner, such as who exactly owns Bluesky. It also reiterates Bluesky’s goal to federate with other servers that run ATproto. If/when that happens, bridging to the ActivityPub fediverse is all but guaranteed. This will complicate the question about what the fediverse entails even further.
Bluesky, continued: Bluesky has a roadmap update. They give a shout out to an extension Skylink, that shows you if a domain that you visit while browsing is used as a domain on Bluesky. This is pretty much the exact thing as the StreetPass extension for Mastodon.
One of the servers in the far-right server cluster that include places like Kiwifarms suffered a databreach, which includes leaked DMs. The Daily Dot reports that the DMs show that Alex Gleason is working closely with Trump’s Truth Social as well. This in itself is not surprising news, as both platforms use the Soapbox front-end, of which Alex Gleason is the creator. Gleason claims that this information was public all along. The story by Daily Dot did bring this connection into the spotlight, with outlets like Yahoo also reporting on it.
WordPress.com has launched paid newsletters in a challenge to Substack. This is not fediverse news, for now, but the impact might be visible in the fediverse later on. WordPress is actively working on further integration into the fediverse with their ActivityPub plugin. Substack has so far not focused on interoperability with other platforms. Their new microblogging platform, Notes, does not interoperate, for example. How this will play out is uncertain, but worth watching.
I think I misunderstood how the group portion of how kbin works. I think I get it better now and it just reinforced that I was making a lot of assumptions. Going to keep learning! #kbin
פתחתי חשבון ב־kbin.social, אלטרנטיבה ל־Reddit ב־Fediverse. אם מישהו רוצה לעקוב אחריי שם, החשבון שלי הוא @kjr.
אין פוסטים בעברית, kbin מכיל (לפחות כרגע) רק פוסטים באנגלית. #kbin
Welcome to this week's Symfony Station newsletter. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world and the Fediverse.
What do we call the Lemmy/Kbin Universe?
The lemmyverse sounds perfect, but it ignores alternatives like kbin etc. It would be better if we didn't end up with the situation we have with Mastodon where people assume Mastodon is the fediverse....
Explore this week's Symfony, Drupal, PHP, and Fediverse news in the latest Symfony Station newsletter (mailchi.mp)
Welcome to this week's Symfony Station newsletter. It's your review of the essential news in the Symfony and PHP development communities focusing on protecting democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world and the Fediverse.