Why we need to move on from kbin.social en (kbin.social)

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:

https://kbin.social

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

https://cutie.city/@nuz/110602855304673785

ernest,
@ernest@kbin.social avatar

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.

deweydecibel,

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.

sentient_loom,

And that's why we need to constantly remind ourselves to spread out while staying connected (the precise function of federation)

ArugulaZ,
@ArugulaZ@kbin.social avatar

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.

FreeBooteR69,
@FreeBooteR69@kbin.social avatar

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.

Awwab,
@Awwab@kbin.social avatar

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.

abff08f4813c,

Yeah, that's one of the things kinda holding me back for now as well.

Edit: I fnally gave it a shot. It turned out to be pretty easy. I just followed the admin guide on kbin's codeberg at https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/wiki#admin-guide and scrolled down to the "Install with Docker" section.

Did this on an M1 Mac that already had Docker Desktop set up, so basically I skipped the first four subsections as not relevant and went straight down to the "Clone repo" subsection. (After cloning the repo, there is a section on getting docker-ce set up for Linux/GNU that I skipped).

I simply did "docker compose build" and didn't explicitly need to build fresh images. Then I ran "docker compose up" and the system was up.

Going to https://kbin.localhost .. told me that I forgot to build my npm or yarn assets. Whoops!

Since I didn't want to mess around with yarn on the host system (though that probably would have worked if I tried) I just found the kbin-php container id by checking the list from "docker ps" and then used "docker exec -it [kbin-php-container-id] /bin/sh" to log in with a shell. Then I ran "apk add yarn" followed by "yarn install" and "yarn build"

After that everything worked.

Somehow I missed seeing the configuration section, and so I created an admin user by registering a new user through the UI, and then running "docker exec -it [postgres-contanier-id] psql -U kbin kbin" to connect direcly to the database. Using psql I executed "update "user" set roles="['ROLE_ADMIN']", is_verified=true where id = 1;" then logged out and logged back in get recognized as an admin.

Finally I went ahead and created the random magazine through the UI.

Something is still off. The UI works fine and anything locally is good, but I can not seem to subscribe to magazines on other instances or even search for them from my own kbin.local - they just comes up empty. Not sure why this is happening but I'll update as soon as I learn more!

a1studmuffin,
@a1studmuffin@aussie.zone avatar

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.

0110010001100010,

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.

a1studmuffin,
@a1studmuffin@aussie.zone avatar

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!

glittalogik,

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.

abff08f4813c,

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.

Machinist3359,

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...

smokinjoe,
@smokinjoe@kbin.social avatar

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.

Gargleblaster,
@Gargleblaster@kbin.social avatar

Magazines having a chance to mature is going to lead to people being further entrenched on one instance.

smokinjoe,
@smokinjoe@kbin.social avatar

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.

Gargleblaster,
@Gargleblaster@kbin.social avatar

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.

majkeli,
@majkeli@kbin.social avatar

Has he requested this?

Machinist3359,

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,

Deliverator,
@Deliverator@kbin.social avatar

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

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