There've been some stability issues with kbin.social for a couple days now. Been having trouble loading threads and even just voting on things sometimes doesn't work. Hopefully it gets resolved soon!
I’m glad you said that you don’t think that privacy is the biggest issue. Our posts are already public and can be scraped easily. I’ve stopped reading posts about privacy issues because they seem misinformed to me.
I don’t know what to think about the rest at this stage, but I’m beyond suspicious of Meta, which has proven itself to be a deeply unethical company.
mod workload increasing to unsustainable levels with the overnight addition of millions of users
meta would be a large enough instance to be considered a monopoly of the entire fediverse
the fediverse goal of putting control of social media back in the hands of users would no longer be possible if companies controlled the majority of the space
Most people probably didn’t consider the internet something that could be monopolised at the start either.
We have the same view on private social media.
IMO we should treat this like any other instance that goes against what we want to see on the fediverse, defed it on all the main instances and if someone wants to access it they can have a threads account or an account on a small instance that is federated with them.
Meta (or any large entity) cannot monopolize or control the fediverse. If their implementation starts drifting from established norms, they will be blocked by most instances or will just be incompatible. The example used to back up this argument is usually XMPP, but people forget that XMPP is still around. It never died; its just a smaller, niche network.
The fediverse is already a small, niche network. So if Meta comes in and tries to control the network, it will then be responsible for maintaining its own "Meta-fediverse" network (that some instances may choose to be a part of) while the remaining instances will remain as a small, niche network. Meta can't force current fediverse servers to implement any Meta-specific features or to change their software in any way.
The mod workload argument is the only one that I see being a real issue, but the target is wrong. Anyone worried about that should be discussing it with fediverse devs to improve mod tools, not trying to force the entire fediverse to stay at their preferred size
Meta (or any large entity) cannot monopolize or control the fediverse. If their implementation starts drifting from established norms, they will be blocked by most instances or will just be incompatible.
Right now, many are already desperate for activity and thus hesitant to defederate. Do you actually think that you'll convince people to defederate once everyone's used to all the content they provide? "Hey guys, Meta's starting to make changes, so we're going to cut the content you're used to seeing by 99%." That's an impossible sell. Once content dependence is established, there is no turning back.
… but people forget that XMPP is still around. It never died; its just a smaller, niche network. The fediverse is already a small, niche network.
Most of us want to see the open fediverse grow into something a bit less small and a bit less niche, but that possibility will be dashed away if we put activity in Meta's hands and then let them take it away from us. Tons of people will leave platforms like Mastodon to go to Threads or otherwise have to live with most of their content being gone and no longer seeing the posts of most of whom they follow. That's lots of people who would have been sold on the fediverse but now see it as dead because of the massive activity drop. Threads coming and going takes the view of our situation from "It could grow a lot," to "It really fell off when Threads left," and the latter will make it impossible to grow again.
If we want a fediverse with the values we care about to grow, we don't need Meta. It's insane to start pretending that this is the case just because Meta is offering to control 99% of the content. Patience will help us in the long run, whereas relying on Meta to carry the fediverse will absolutely hurt us.
Once content dependence is established, there is no turning back.
Everyone who is on the fediverse has already made that choice. They are intentionally on a network with less content because of the other benefits And a huge portion of the discussion of Meta joining the fediverse is made up of ppl who are saying they will block Threads on day 1.
the latter will make it impossible to grow again.
That's what everyone was saying back when the fediverse was even smaller, or even before it existed. "How can you compete with giants like G+, twitter, and facebook?" There will always be groups of people who will not participate in corporate social media. And there will always be people who like the convenience of corporate social media but get fed up with it and seek alternatives. And there will always be people who bounce between services.
Tons of people will leave platforms like Mastodon to go to Threads
They're only here because they left corporate social media. If they were going to leave for Threads, why wouldn't they do it now? They've heard all the warnings about some supposed EEE and assume that Threads won't connect to the fediverse forever so why would Threads adding ActivityPub support suddenly change their mind? Going to threads now puts them in the same state as going to threads later in some hypothetical future where the fediverse is too small to matter.
If we want a fediverse with the values we care about to grow...
I don't care about Meta and I'm not relying on them for anything. When they join the fediverse, individual instance owners will still have all the power. User on the fediverse will still be able to control their own feeds. But there are people who use Threads and being able to communicate with them would be nice. I don't think any of the fears about Meta on the fediverse are justified and I think the fediverse will continue on just like it has for more than a decade.
A 'hide downvotes from blocked users' might be a good function. Won't solve the problem of reducing visibility of posts, but if you're bugged by it, it would be a help.
@billothekid2 honestly, it's not an uncommon phenomenon, it has nothing to do with seeing your downvotes.
Over the years on reddit, where votes are anonymous, I would sometimes notice all my comments being downvoted (usually after some kind of altercation, my favourite was the guy who singled me out for criticizing Margaret Thatcher... hardly a hot take).
In fact iirc reddit had to change its interface so that voting on comments from a person's profile page doesn't change their comment count.
Some people are just petty. I think it's better to at least know when it's happening so I can avoid that person.
Ernest is dope, figure that's worth repeating, probably the hardest working man in open source social media right now
I really like the UI a lot compared to other fediverse alternatives
I like that I can see both blog posts and threads from one app
Kbin users seem to be more balanced than many lemmy instances which seem to foster groupthink and brigading.
Features seem to be rolled out based on community feedback, I made a post a long time ago about abandoned magazines and was pleasantly surprised to see a method of reclaiming ghost magazines included in a recent update.
Yeah. The UI would be my key takeaway here. I just find Lemmy convoluted and confusing. Might be me just being too used to the old Reddit layout but I just like kbin more on that front.
Ernest, we love you, man. FYI the complaints about Kbin come from a very vocal minority; most of us understand managing a project like this is difficult and do not have these gripes. We will be fine, please take care of yourself and your family first. Btw thanks for everything you have done for us.
Please don't feel guilty for prioritising your family and yourself, that is 100% the right thing to do.
Also building on what others have said don't chase perfection by the end of the month, at some point you will have to draw a line and call it v1.00. It won't be, it can't be perfect ...but kbin is already great, and as you observe there is a lot of development which has already happened which isn't live here yet - I'm looking forward to when it does go live.
And finally, just thank you. Being admin of kbin.social is already a huge responsibility, owning and managing the codebase on top of that must feel like a huge weight of responsibility at times - it is really appreciated and we love what you have created here, it is already epic.
This is a result of the original design. Kbin, up until just before the peak traffic hit, was using boosts as upvotes and favorites/likes were just below the post/thread (where boost sits now). Lemmy does it the way it is now (likes = upvotes) so Ernest changed it to match Lemmy behavior. But just as he changed it, he hadn’t changed the calculation for reputation to match when the server nearly melted down and he has to spend all his time just trying to keep the site alive by himself.
I see you’re on a different Kbin instance. Was this intended to be a threaded reply, out of curiosity? Because it shows up as a top-level comment on the post for me.
Yes, but my bigger point is that it’s not threaded as a reply to one of that user’s comments.
Edit: Oops, nevermind. I saw their comments elsewhere down here but didn’t realize they were OP. Just one of the interface things on Kbin that needs improvement.
Edit 2: I need to figure out how to do strikethrough text on here
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.
"This week, I also refreshed the project's code, and it seems like I'm slowly getting back on track regarding health matters."
I am glad you are getting better.
I will have to have a look into helping with moderation though I take it site moderation is at the instance level unless you mean for magazines?
Today, I'm going for a minor procedure at the hospital, and I won't be available for the next 2-4 days. When I return, I'll push all the corrections and fixes I've been working on and present plans for the near future. In the meantime, I'm making sure that the instance operates smoothly.
kbinMeta
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.