I think a lot of us have had the same thoughts looking around kbin.
We all appreciate the work Ernest has done, but we really need someone to dedicate some time to picking out a team to help him, but it seems like that's not happening for whatever reason. I know there's a few other people in the codeberg, but I believe there was a falling out there. What we really need in addition to that though is just generic admins.
Does anyone else think that the Fediverse needs its own URL prefix?
Hear me out. There is a “mailto” prefix standard. Email addresses are identified with such a prefix. Each of my devices is individually configured how to handle it. I’ve configured my mobile device to launch a certain app. My desktop device launches my web browser and goes to a certain site. Email apps and sites know how to set this configuration and will usually prompt you at some point.
We should be able to do the same for Fediverse profiles and posts. If I click on a link to a Fediverse profile or post, the local device will know how to launch an app or browser, and in the browser case, know your “default” Fediverse instance. This can provide the same seamless experience as clicking on an email address. (If a person does not have anything configured it could default to a web browser visiting the profile/post instance just as it works today.)
The main issues with the improper functioning of the instance have been resolved, but it led to additional complications. Currently, using the instance should be quite comfortable, but I will continue to work intensively on a comprehensive solution for the next few days. Therefore, occasional interruptions or errors may still...
The thing about the 'Big fedi, small fedi' article is that it sets up a false dichotomy.
I think that the fediverse can be very big and also much safER than extant social media (or the fediverse as it sits today).
Moderation can require a human touch and moderation can also be rendered much less necessary by automated tools (note I didn't say "we can do moderation by automated tools," I'm making a very nuanced distinction between moderation and other safety tools).
Over the past year these are the top arguments against the Fediverse:
Too left wing
Too difficult
Not enough people
Not enough mutuals
Too nerdy / too niche
Too confusing
Too ugly
Too many different options and apps
Too many servers
Not owned by a corporation (yes, really, one person told me he prefers an oligarch)
There is no algorithm
Hard to discover people
Many of these are based on the attitude and feeling, but there is some truth to it, for example discoverability is still a bit of an issue. I personally find most of the Fediverse web UIs clunky considering the big world standards, but I’m sure they will get better over time.
@rolle i think this crusade that so many on here have joined is a fruitless one. i think if we all just chilled out on here, ppl would start showing up. like, part of the issue of the fediverse is that half of the convos on here are about the fediverse or how we get more people to join.
if 30 ppl were all standing outside of a bar shouting about how great it is in there, would any of us believe them?
Way more interesting and healthy fediverse news is happening in the shadows and is barely getting discussed! Which is: Discourse has federation between different instances of itself and other #fediverse software such as Mastodon working!
Over the last few days, there's been an increasing problem with spam accounts from lemmy.blahaj.zone. It seems like they're working on addressing this issue, at least in a one-at-a-time fashion, but it's clear that they have not been able to proactively prevent the problem yet....
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but the #fediverse does not need a dating app. Please please please do not create a dating app here at least until we fix some fairly substantive issues around trust and safety.
I am new and signed up using kbin cafe but seem to be able to post in kbin social. I am guessing each website is like its own email service from what I can see. Though I am not sure if the owner of kbin social is the same as the owner of kbin cafe. I take it anyone can set up their own kbin site and connect it to the other kbin...
A new episode of Dot Social, the first podcast about the open social web, is out! In it, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with ActivityPub co-author @evan about what the protocol unlocks for builders and entrepreneurs, how open-source social networks change our relationships to content and each other, and why any of this matters at all. Learn more and take a listen!
Right now, downvotes (reduces) don't federate to (and from?) Kbin instances. This lack of federation makes the downvote counter really inaccurate—a comment that looks like it's +10 might be -15 when you look at it from lemmy.world....
When it comes to /kbin as a platform, the federation of downvotes will certainly work and will be configurable per instance. Today, I started the initial work on implementing new ActivityPub services from scratch. This is a good time to start a discussion on how it should work on kbin.social - to your points, I would also add:
Downvote federation only applies to remote threads from other instances, without affecting local therads
The monthly update for Bluesky, Dutch broadcaster NPO joins the fediverse, and German news organisation Heise Online reflects on a year of being on Mastodon.
Today, a technical server malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, it wasn't the planned update yet. The upcoming one will definitely be much shorter ;)...
This week (at the latest at the beginning of next week), there will be a several-hour technical break. A banner with detailed information about this will appear 24 hours before the planned work....
Like you, I'm a passionate user of K.Bin but lately, I'm noticing that things are getting kinda stale around here. The most recent thread in this, the top-level magazine on K.Bin, is 4 days old. Many other top 25 magazines are also suffering from a similar lack of fresh content. I run /m/scifi and it's been continuing to grow...
A discussion happening over on beehaw about problems with federation and moderation, and on fundamental issues with Lemmy itself, and what would go into making a fork vs starting something new.
This week, I've been dealing with cleaning up instances from spam. Several hundred accounts were removed, along with several thousand posts - these were massive operations. It's possible that due to the volume of requests, other federated instances hit rate limits. I see that some of them are still in the queue with a "fail" status. I will gradually resend them after some time. Along with the update of kbin.social and the first release of kbin, new modeartion options will be available, including spam blocking (such as global blocking domains), a new reporting panel for moderators, and improved federation between instances. I will also address abandoned instances and ensure that each one has at least a few active moderators. I know how urgent this issue is, and it's my top priority. I just need a bit more time as Piotr and I are preparing for the update.
Just because I was curious which platform takes the smallest cut:
Patreon takes 8%, plus payment processing (I assume another 3-5%). Let's call it 11%.
Buy Me a Coffee seems to take 5%, and Stripe takes 2.9%. Basically 8%.
Liberapay apparently takes 0% themselves, but 3-5% goes to payment processing through Stripe or Paypal. The site is funded by people who directly support the Liberapay account itself lmao. So 3% puts them in the clear lead.
I know Patreon is basically a household name at this point, but if you're open to a bit of change I'd encourage folks to use Liberapay!
So… what's going on? (kbin.social)
Since the beginning of the year, there's been a bit of a pattern over on @kbinDevlog:...
[UPDATE] Issues with the functioning of kbin.social (kbin.social)
The main issues with the improper functioning of the instance have been resolved, but it led to additional complications. Currently, using the instance should be quite comfortable, but I will continue to work intensively on a comprehensive solution for the next few days. Therefore, occasional interruptions or errors may still...
Problems with spam accounts from lemmy.blahaj.zone (kbin.social)
Over the last few days, there's been an increasing problem with spam accounts from lemmy.blahaj.zone. It seems like they're working on addressing this issue, at least in a one-at-a-time fashion, but it's clear that they have not been able to proactively prevent the problem yet....
Is kbin social and kbin cafe run by the same person? (kbin.cafe)
I am new and signed up using kbin cafe but seem to be able to post in kbin social. I am guessing each website is like its own email service from what I can see. Though I am not sure if the owner of kbin social is the same as the owner of kbin cafe. I take it anyone can set up their own kbin site and connect it to the other kbin...
Up the Slope: On Mastodon and What Social Engineering Should Be (siderea) (siderea.dreamwidth.org)
The original mastodon thread with some conversation on the replies....
What's the plan for downvote federation? (kbin.social)
Right now, downvotes (reduces) don't federate to (and from?) Kbin instances. This lack of federation makes the downvote counter really inaccurate—a comment that looks like it's +10 might be -15 when you look at it from lemmy.world....
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 43 (fediversereport.com) Polish
The monthly update for Bluesky, Dutch broadcaster NPO joins the fediverse, and German news organisation Heise Online reflects on a year of being on Mastodon.
We're back (kbin.social)
Today, a technical server malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, it wasn't the planned update yet. The upcoming one will definitely be much shorter ;)...
October: kbin.social planned technical outage (kbin.social)
This week (at the latest at the beginning of next week), there will be a several-hour technical break. A banner with detailed information about this will appear 24 hours before the planned work....
"It's the content, stupid." - Quick Notes to Supercharge K.Bin (kbin.social)
Like you, I'm a passionate user of K.Bin but lately, I'm noticing that things are getting kinda stale around here. The most recent thread in this, the top-level magazine on K.Bin, is 4 days old. Many other top 25 magazines are also suffering from a similar lack of fresh content. I run /m/scifi and it's been continuing to grow...
Beehaw on Lemmy: The long-term conundrum of staying here (beehaw.org)
A discussion happening over on beehaw about problems with federation and moderation, and on fundamental issues with Lemmy itself, and what would go into making a fork vs starting something new.
Spam from unmoderated communities/magazines
Both !infosec and !science are being spammed constantly with opioid ads and other non-sense....
Remember you can donate to help support the development and maintenance of kbin and/or Ernest directly (kbin.social)
Ernest recently posted a site update, which included this note:...