Why we need to move on from kbin.social

It hasn't even been two weeks. Let people get used to the platforms.

Difference instances are showing up slowly, so maybe instead of saying everyone needs to split up before communities and magazines have had a chance to mature even in the slightest, we slow down a little bit and support the hosts and developers we have now.

Or perhaps, look for new instances and report back on places folks can migrate to.

Hey, I think there's a lot of truth in that. I don't want to force anyone to stay here ;) I believe that kbin can be a stepping stone to a wider fediverse, which is great. However, I'm trying to keep the entry barrier as low as possible so that everyone can find their place here. The rest will come with time. Currently, we're working with contributors to make setting up and maintaining your own instance less of a nightmare, and it should change for the better soon.

https://kbin.social/m/fediverse@lemmy.ml/p/485886/This-happened-quickly-Lemmy-is-now-the-second-biggest-platform-next#post-comment-855115

ps. The queue of deleted accounts will be processed with the next update.

I've found it really beneficial joining an instance that's hosted locally to my country and/or city. Not only can you take advantage of the "Local" filter to literally see local posts in your area, but you also get an amazing ping so everything feels super responsive.

Hey! Hey hey hey! No! I JUST moved away from Reddit! Now you're telling me I need to move into an even smaller place than this? Can we space out our social media crises a bit? I'm still winded from the Dutch douchebag buying Twitter.

I've been thinking about setting up a single-user instance of kbin for myself. Maybe this is the kick in the pants I need to finally get around to it.

The general consensus is that this was going to be a monetary offer to allow Instagram to further colonize the Fediverse by purchasing one of the larger servers.

No, that's completely wrong. You're scaremongering. There was no such offer.

There is no confirmation of any financial contracts, or moderation arrangements and Eugen Rochko/Gargron has stated he doesn't know anything about any secret deals.[1]

From @supernovae@universeodon.com:

The nda wasn’t because of some absurd agreement but just the fact they’re launching a new project and we’re getting access to engineers and product team to discuss what the relationship could be. And they went well.[2]

There was a call to talk about engineering, moderation, safety, support for user privacy controls and how federation would look like. (and more)

There was no deal signing or any bullshit like that - that’s all fake news.

The nda is because none of this stuff is released and it’s up to meta to share details or admins to join the ongoing calls to learn in advance of launch what is going on.[3]

We don’t know, what we don’t know. So i initiated contact and meta obliged. Because the product isn’t released yet, there is an NDA.[4]

I agree. I have an account on kbin that is my primary account, but I also have one on lemmy and mastodon.

Some other instances can be found here. It doesn’t list these three instances: kbin.cafe, feddit.online, and fedia.io.

The funny part about this story is that, while everyone has their "price", most of the people building these instances did so because they want nothing to do with these corporations.

Now admittedly things can change, but these corporations also don't seem to understand how these insurances work. Buying one instances, while shitty and something that hopefully won't happen, isn't the same as buying a company. You can't "own" the Fediverse because of the nature of what it is.

People need to just chill out and touch some grass.

Like how long have you been on the internet? If the whole federation thing can be bought out by a company and ruined, then it's a failed experiment and we move on to the next thing. It's a tale as old as the internet itself, cool grassroots thing gets popular, sells out, destroys itself, repeat every few years.

For now, kbin and lemmy are working, but don't think this will last forever or won't get tested. Either the concept is good and it will stand the test of corporate takeover, or it won't and we try something else.

Honestly this is a pretty small community. The whole platform needs to mature a little before we start “spreading out”

When I joined kbin.social it was the only kbin instance. Or at least the only one that was actually online at the time.

When there's a way to migrate accounts I'll definitely look into moving somewhere else, though, for the sake of load balancing if nothing else.

I may move on to a private or semi privately run instance in the future but I'm definitely a fan of kbin over Lemmy and the current state of self hosting kbin is a mess. When things have gotten better on that front I will look at moving on and expanding the fediverse.

For those who are interested in a different Kbin instance I joined Kbin.cafe the other day. It’s very small right now and has some good hardware running it I believe. Not many magazines/communities but of course we can browse others from any instance.

It runs smoothly too since low traffic. I love the fediverse!

The cynic in me screams that this post is to stir up FUD because someone at BigSocial is shitting their pants right now... :D (/s?)

But yes, you have some valid points but stretching too thin is not going to get us anywhere and will just result in people leaving due to lack of content. Remember that divide and conquer is a valid tactic too, so having many small instances isn't going to magically shield us from Bad Things (TM).

I won't downvote bc I think this is a genuine question OP is presenting, but I disagree with people splitting quite yet.

People will naturally find their pockets as the Fediverse grows. The benefit is that it's already decentralized, so you have that option.

Centralization is a result of social behavior. People naturally gravitate towards the place where others are.

Like, the internet wasn't centralized by corporations. It was centralized by the users. And it will always happen. It's a very predictable pattern of human behavior.

I actually started with an account on Fedia.io before coming here, but they're down like 90% of the time and I fear it might be too much for Jerry (operator of that instance) to keep up with, at least for now. But having an account on multiple servers that I can bounce between when such things happen has been nice.

I fully intend to self host once the software matures a bit, so there's that. Hopefully that comes sooner rather than later.

Don't do the work of monopolizing for them! The great thing about the fediverse is that we can all spread out and it doesn't really affect the user experience but it sure makes it a lot harder for wall street to buy a large portion of the network.

Nothing wrong with having accounts across instances. I use lemmy.ca as well as kbin, a few across mastodon, not a big deal with me to be honest.

KBin has been appealing to some over Lemmy because of the similarness to Reddit and less of a learning curve due to federation.

I'm a proponent of spreading out but it does have its faults as of current: fractured content across many similar communities, more server management needed (though less cost per server). Discovering other instances from your own is harder, defederation and server politics and bots in some cases.

I like how it is in Lemmy hopping between servers, but honestly some don't like to that and that's fine. People on the largest servers should definitely support the server admins financially if they can.

Meta reached out to Kev from Fosstodon. https://fosstodon.org/@kev

@Gargleblaster Many thanks, this post is as much enlightening as it frightens me. Those who wished ill for us exist and have the means to do so.

I plan on switching instances whenever account transfer becomes feasible! But as it stands right now I'd rather not have to get my account set up all over again for another instance that might potentially go down or make radical changes. That was the very thing that put me off of Mastodon, before they added migration, and I'd rather not repeat that again. (If you have more time and energy than I do, and you're thinking about manually migrating - absolutely do so)

I don't entirely disagree with the post, but it could have been worded much better, the title in particular.

Where have you moved to?

When I read the dev post the other day, I thought of the possible issue with servers. Stress and particularly financing. Yes, users could donate, but I feel it's not sustainable long term.
Hope account migration could come soon. Preferably across Fediverse. Not only within Kbin.

I’m a little hesitant to put on my tinfoil hat here.

But maybe it’s best that the super users kind of spread out a bit.

Spez might not give a shit that we leave, but Meta is probably all over this. “How can we make our content better than failing Reddit?”

Then again, I don’t know shit about fuck.

That doesn't make any sense. Why would Facebook be interested in buying existing instances? The code is open source, they can use it without asking permission. Their server infrastructure is way better that anything we have. And our user base is ridiculously small compared to theirs (Instagram has more than one billion users!). The danger of Facebook taking over the Fediverse is not that they buy instances, it's that they Embrace-Extend-Extinguish us.

That being said, I do think that we "are using the Fediverse wrong", and that we should gravitate to smaller instances of like-minded people. This would make much easier instance-level moderation and server load, and de-federation would make more sense. Now there are a bunch of generalist big instance (kbin.social, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works) that are federating/defederating for reasons that aren't completely transparent to their users. But if you have, say, a small doglove.rs instance and a small catlove.rs instance, they can defederate themselves without impacting users that are not involved in the beef amongst the instances.

I agree with all that you've said

Is there not a way that folks with server access can run a duplicate of this instance and then put it behind a load balanced proxy? If kbin does not support this, I say we help with the code to make this a possibility.

One thing I'll say is that both kbin and Lemmy need improvements in order to recommend smaller instances. The UX around being the first in the server to subscribe to a sub is really, really bad. Seriously, try it if you haven't yet. Magazine search won't find the sub. It won't show up on the front page. If you try and visit the sub, you'll get a 404 and no way to subscribe. You have to know specifically how to search for the sub in order to get the option to subscribe, and even then you won't see any existing content in it.

The problem is less impactful in larger instances because there's a better chance that you're not the first or that the sub was basically "seeded" for major instances. It's a terrible divide in UX.

I already have a few accounts on different Lemmy instances but you might have a point there. I'll see about other kbin instances, although this one is already cozy for me. Hopefully won't run into federation issues when going to another one like this very one had in the week of the Rexxit.

I agree with this but also I have an account on lemmy mastodon and kbin. the only reason i use kbin so much is because it has Threads, Microblogging and magazines. I really like the microblogging cause i can see all the mastodon and other people. yea but we do need to go to smaller servers and still interact. Whatever Meta touches turns to shit!

This is a bit premature. If and it is a big if a nefarious corporate entity was to purchase an instance, then magazines would be re-established on other instances and so would users. The instance would effectively die off and be reborn elsewhere. For most people I sense this wouldn't be an issue as the cost of moving instances and creating new accounts is generally quite low.

If you are concerned around the possibility though, you can always set up a new single user instance, which you have more control over.

To be honest, the only reason to move accounts at this point would be if the instance administrator asked - due to issues with load, for example - in order to be a good citizen. Until that time, try not to worry and enjoy the fediverse 🙂

i think whats missing is the ability to migrate a community to a different server within the federation.

We are more reactive than proactive so just wait till kbin.social gets bought out before migrating again to another - smaller - instance...

Meta requesting NDAs to discuss P92 means literally nothing. I once signed a NDA with a prospect (not even a client), and the whole thing unraveled in a very nasty way when said prospect showed very little respect for my work. The fact Meta wants people to sign NDAs to discuss a not-yet-public project is no grand conspiracy to kill the Fediverse. It's literally just how companies work.

More generally, the discourse over Meta joining the Fediverse is beyond irrational. People are discussing rumors as if they were facts (is there any evidence that Meta has offered payments to Mastodon admins?). They hypothesize and catastrophize everything. What about facts and reasonable hypotheses?

I'm not trying to defend Meta here. I don't trust them, at all. But not trusting them, and inventing an alternative reality, are two completely different things.

I like it here. I will stay awhile. I tried mastodon and beehaw. Both of them are fine, but I must prefer kbin.social. As things evolve, who knows what will happen, but for now, I am content.

I agree with you actually and I already made accounts on some Lemmy instances, one of which is tiny and real nice. I still use this one for now as it‘s easier for me on mobile, but I‘m checking the others too and it has the same content! I will probably switch over completely once a few more apps released.

I fully agree with you. The thing is that with /kbin that it's not ready to be fully used yet and there's quite a many growing pains still. I've tried to self host and been on couple of other instances and it's not been working well on different levels compared to kbin.social that has been working quite great since registration. My end goal is to self host it for my self sometime in the future but not yet.

You're probably wrong about what Meta's intents are for the Fediverse. We've heard some things about a prospective product from Meta called "Threads", which would be connected to the fediverse or the threadiverse. I'm looking forward to what they bring, and what it will mean for communication through Meta. If they can make it more locally focused and make it easier to reach out to people local to me, I will be very interested; doubly if it can be used from a web browser. I actually want a central place to communicate. I also understand that these companies need to make money; and I recognize that I am a user, not a customer. I have no interest in paying, so I'll defend myself in a marginal way and just keep moving.

What a shit take - every 12 hours there's some cunt in here telling us what to do like the world's going to end if we don't - calm your fucking shit and quit talking out of your ass and out of turn