I think most of us who moved here from Reddit are enjoying our time here on kbin.social. We’ve left a lot of the riff-raff behind us and made new friends with intelligent, thoughtful members of kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon, etc…
But we need to spread out.
Not only have we stressed the server with thousands of immigrating users, but we were being watched by darker forces, namely Meta and Instagram.
A quick search of the net will show that we were not the first mass-migration. The first migration was last year when people from ‘the bird site’ (rhymes with jitter) fled Elon Musk’s new regime. Most of those people moved to Mastodon.
We largely moved to kbin. Kbin.social to be more exact.
I’m a member of both Mastodon and kbin, and a couple of posts shocked me. The first one about Meta I have found again:
https://mastodon.social/@gnarkotics/110568580882355105
The second one about Instagram I have failed to locate, but the gist was that Instagram had reached out to one of the larger Fediverse servers and asked the person who runs to have a meeting ‘off the record’. That person turned them down and told other members of the Fediverse what happened. 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.
And therein lies the problem: if the majority of users gravitate to a few large servers, then that leaves those larger servers vulnerable to exploitation.
I, as a recent immigrant, did not understand this. I thought that, intuitively, we should all gather in one place and grow the server. It’s the exact opposite. We need to spread out to smaller instances. This didn’t really register with me until I spoke with this person.
https://fedi.getimiskon.xyz/objects/77a0f3cd-6f31-42f7-a3ea-29af8b25c0b3
Remember too that having an account on a smaller instance still allows us to see everything on kbin.social. For example, look at this:
We are looking at a mixture of posts from Lemmy and kbin.
Moving to a smaller instance does not limit your interactions. What damages the fediverse is people trying to recreate all of Reddit on one instance.
TLDR: If you like it here, the best thing you can do for the fediverse right now is to set up on one of the less populous instances.
I invite correction and clarifications.
EDIT: Adding further sources below.
Meta/Facebook is inviting Fediverse admins under NDA for “meetings” (mstdn.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384207
Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
https://www.loomio.com/d/QoH98Gg6/facebook-inc-is-planning-to-join-the-fediverse-how-do-we-make-it-lose-as-much-money-as-possible
Beware Of Meta Offering Gifts To Mastodon
https://medium.com/nextwithtech/beware-of-meta-offering-gifts-to-mastodon-6adb317e039d
Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media
https://marketingnewscanada.com/news/meta-vs-mastodon-battle-for-the-future-of-decentralized-social-media
Legal-Copyright discussion from Mastodon yesterday
ttps://mas.to/@franktaber/110602489997086618
And a cartoon to boot
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.
Magazines having a chance to mature is going to lead to people being further entrenched on one instance.
If you use reddit as an example, they have hundreds, thousands of subreddits.
We aren’t anywhere close to even a hundred nature magazines.
Allowing people to be comfortable for a month won’t cause any long term damage.
You know who’s uncomfortable? The person behind the scenes keeping the server afloat while you make yourself comfortable.
The real message here is that you’re not going to move.
I didn’t expect everyone to get the message, so you do you.
I do wonder if it would be healthier for the fedditverse for instances to really narrow their magazine/community footprint. I.e. “This is an Anime instance” a “Science instance” etc. Making off-topic magazines could either be discouraged or outright banned.
Not looking forward to having dozens of “news” and “technology” magazines sharing the same stories,
That’s fair but what if, say, the “news” instance dies/goes offine or something along these lines, isn’t all the content it hosts going to be lost or become inaccessible? Not sure how the whole thing works but it’s something that’s been concerning me. With redundant communities across multiple instances at least the whole topic won’t go down with any single instance.
I sort of think instances forming around distinct communities is what the Fediverse’s early architects had in mind, but it just doesn’t seem to be turning out that way. Users are not frequently self-segregating by ideology (e.g. lemmygrad) or interest (e.g. startrek.website). Even beehaw is not really specific enough to be ideologically distinct. Lemmy.ml is even less so, despite the devs/admins politics, and lemmy.world or lemmy.ca aren’t even trying. Neither is kbin.social, to be fair, but imho that’s okay. It’s just a fact to deal with.
Without the expected behavior, you end up with one of two options. On one hand, you hope that the admins of tiny instances are superstars and populate their /c/'s or /m/'s to attract a following against all odds and force the projects back on the roadmap by having all the fans of a niche community or all the people interested in a specific viewpoint post mostly or entirely on the relevant instances /c/ or /m/. On the other, you have the discourse dominated by a few busier instances when their new “subs” populate more quickly. The latter, while not ideal, is not as bad as true centralization and, importantly, it seems to match actual behavior and it might be useful for front-end devs of apps and sites to make choices that work with the user behavior as best they can, like optional auto-aggregation of identically named communities.
That’s what I think too. There’s going to be a dozen gaming communities in their own instance and none will really take off. To get it going there needs to be one.
Frankly I think we need more people before we can start getting concerned about things like that. If we’re trying to make the Fediverse a viable alternative it has to be appealing and easy enough to use that people want to use it. If we don’t get that right this whole thing is doomed from the start
The fastest way to get kbin.social defederated is if you try to build it into reddit with everyone participating from the same instance.
As for not being concerned, many in the fediverse watching us roll in are concerned. Not because they don’t like redditors, but because everyone is going to one of 3 or so places.
Can magazines migrate instances like users can? (even ignoring federation concerns, at some point it’s going to be much easier to scale this thing if the more popular magazines can spawn off to their own instances)
No but once the magazine/community has been created it doesn’t really matter which instance it lives on because any user from any instance can post, comment and mod in that magazine.
It’s an idea I’ve seen floated, and personally would appreciate, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no Magazine or Community migration for kbin or Lemmy.
Incidentally, I’m commenting from a Lemmy instance, to a kbin Magazine on kbin.social, and subscribing to RedditMigration on kbin.social was pretty seamless, at least as seamless as any other non-local Lemmy Community. OP is right in that spreading out is a decent idea. It’s not really necessary for everyone to be on the same instance.
Another way to address the problem of corporate takeover and ensuing enshitification is form non-profits, co-ops, or other organizations to actually “own” the instance. My home Mastodon instance has started down this path already.
If this is implemented it’ll be good for the communities to be able to go where they want, but there’s a good chance it can become a source of drama if the net result is smaller communities choosing to migrate to larger instances.
Also, the logistic behind large magazines spawning their own instances only make sense if there’s an option for users to subscribe to an entire instance. AFAIK that’s impossible right now (or I don’t know how to, if anyone know please tell me), so that is something to keep in mind.
I believe there is a healthy relationship between instances and magazines, actually: the way in which topical forums tend to be “hive-mindy” fits well with Fediverse instance culture. The difference is that instead of Reddit-scaling leading in the direction of “locking down” topical discussion to be a bureaucratic game of dancing around every rule, because all users are homogenous - just a name, a score, and a post history - you can have “this board is primarily about this” but then allow in a dose of chaos, affording some privilege to the instance users who already have a set of norms and values in mind and pushing federated comments out of view as needed, where you know the userbases are destined to get into unproductive fights.
This also combats common influencer strategies applying bots and sockpuppeting, because you’ve already built in the premise of an elite space.
There’s work needed on the moderation technology of #threadiverse software to achieve this kind of vision, but it’s something that will definitely be learned as we go along.
This is the most rationale response. A lot of people suffering from mental illness will bog themselves down in theory and never focus on the practically of what they’re saying. This is one of those examples. Just be glad people are using the platform and let it grow organically. If you’re convincing users “they’re doing it wrong”, they’re just going to give the finger and probably leave. What’s great about decentralization is we, as individuals, can choose how we use it. If you want a big server? Join one. If you want a small one? Join one. It really is that simple. Try to ignore people who tell you otherwise.
It’s right to say that instances are showing up slowly, but there is definitely a centralization occurring. According to fediverse.observer, kbin.social has 43k users, and the next most populated instance in the US only has 104 users.
Ernest, developer of kbin and who runs kbin.social, has spoken about the difficulties in running kbin.social with the spike in users. If people are willing to sign up on smaller instances or migrate over, that could help distribute the load.
Or, like me, learn about VPSs and domain names and Linux commands from zero knowledge to get their own instance stood up - but it took a bit and I’m still running into issues here, so I can’t necessarily recommend it for someone who has a life to attend to. :)
tbh before reading your comment I had no idea that there are other kbin instances
Well said. I’m also hoping we eventually get a tool to migrate accounts from one instance to another (or maybe link accounts from multiple sites so they show as combined data together). That way I don’t lose everything if the instance I go to just shuts down one day, who h did happen to Mastodon often in the beginning iirc.
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.
How did you find one that local to you? I’d love to do this as well! I’ve been kicking around just hosting one myself but I leave for vacation in 5 days so that’s probably not a project for right now, lol.
Not OP but you could try fediverse party
I randomly saw someone post from @aussie.zone and the name grabbed my attention. I was actually considering starting my own one for Australians but didn’t need to bother. Perfect timing!
aussie.zone was the first place I landed upon discovering the fediverse, but after hunting in vain for a dark/night-mode option I decided to keep exploring, and the interface/theming here is actually usable.
I’ve since learned that client-side UI/CSS browser extensions for Lemmy are a thing so that’s always an option, and hopefully we’ll start seeing RES-style extensions in the future.
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.
OP is a panicky buffoon who essentially wants the Internet to become a series of unhinged mountain hermits, because having more than one person per instance is OVERCENTRALIZATION THE CORPOS ARE COMING AAAAAAAAAAA
I wouldn’t worry about it. I’d worry that there’s no good way of exporting a federated “kbin account” to another instance if one becomes compromised in some way, or goes down permanently, which both hypothetically solves OP’s insane paranoid rambling and more practical concerns.
Meta/Facebook is inviting Fediverse admins under NDA for “meetings” (mstdn.social)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36384207
Facebook, Inc. is planning to join the Fediverse. How do we make it lose as much money as possible?
https://www.loomio.com/d/QoH98Gg6/facebook-inc-is-planning-to-join-the-fediverse-how-do-we-make-it-lose-as-much-money-as-possible
Beware Of Meta Offering Gifts To Mastodon
https://medium.com/nextwithtech/beware-of-meta-offering-gifts-to-mastodon-6adb317e039d
Meta vs Mastodon: Battle for the Future of Decentralized Social Media
https://marketingnewscanada.com/news/meta-vs-mastodon-battle-for-the-future-of-decentralized-social-media
Legal-Copyright discussion from Mastodon yesterday
ttps://mas.to/@franktaber/110602489997086618
And a cartoon to boot
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.
Man my only issue with pixelfed is followed tags aren’t showing up on my feed. There a issue already submitted, so hopefully it’s resolved soon!
On your own server or someone else’s? There is an artisan command to fix this count
Ugh, I’ve found it difficult to get it up and running. Need to throw more time at it but I thought the docker containers would “just run”.
That is also holding me back. I am hosting tons of stuff myself, all dockerized, but I was not able to get kbin up and running yet. I wish someone would manage the images, so we can just pull, edit a .env and run / upgrade it.
For me the whole process always hangs at a step that seems to have something to do with the php setup. I tried on different servers, even created a fresh Ubuntu 22 LTS and still had the same problem. I am sure I am doing something wrong (probably editing something incorrectly in the settings), but the process it not as easy yet as it is for the other services I am hosting at the moment.
What would be the benefit of a single user instance?
I guess you’d really control your data.
You could do a magazine as your own personal blog.
And you could still post to any instance you want.
You won’t be defederated from other instances. On the flip side if instances start using whitelists instead of automatically federating it could become an issue.
I’m not necessarily recommending a single-user instance, just a smaller one. The people who do have single-user instances generally put out a lot of their own content.
This guy has his own instance, 26k posts and 31k followers.
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral
Same, though I’m lazy enough that I was waiting for linuxserver.io to have a kbin image. I haven’t looked at the documentation yet, but if it’s straightforward enough…
That’s cool, I didn’t know about that. Hopefully someone acts on https://discourse.linuxserver.io/t/kbin-and-lemmy-fediverse-reddit-alternatives/7667 soon.