kbin finally has notifications not throwing an error every time I try to check them, so that much is nice now. I've actually had no problems with the Reddit software on my phone, and I've unsubbed from most of the communities I was part of there which moved across to lemmy. That choice has really trimmed my experience down to a more focused one nicely. I've also gotten done turning federation back off as I want it to be, and my user block list here is getting pretty long, blocking out the spammers that come across my feed.
Of course, because kbin is still one of the smallest sites related to the ActivityPub protocol, there's limited content here compared to Reddit, Then again, there's also less content on all of PeerTube (let alone a single site) than there is on YouTube, and I'd take a shot at saying that even Threads has the largest Mastodon community beat by a country mile, let alone what Twitter still has.
So basically, I guess I'd say I'm not a refugee, I'm just doing as I did with Facebook when it first launched after MySpace and Friendster - keeping my options open and looking around.
RNA for the first time recovered from an extinct species A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct...
I do find that interesting - but the status site doesn't list API requests; and they don't have any diagnosis yet. I wonder if this is come kind of DOS.
Profit above all else is how the world has worked for centuries. You're right it's what brought us where we are. We have an increasing ceiling of education, the greatest overall mobility (socially and spatially), vast swathes of entertainment and communication, at least outside of some nations where there's a major problem politically and socially. People are not going to give up that comfortable society they've become accustomed to. Unless you can make this change immediately profitable, which is unlike most change, people are not going to accept it.
One of the weirder phenomena of the low interest rate era in tech was a tendency to see companies primarily as investments. The goal was not to have a functional business, but an exit, often via IPO or acquisition. I have begun to wonder if that explains what Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been up to lately....
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain things, but It's been about a month since I've started the process of creating a magazine to support the reddit/discord community I've helped mod for the past 4 years... but I've noticed that zero posts show up in google search....
On one hand, I support a strong robots.txt being in place. It keeps data from being used by honest engines (though what constitutes "honesty" varies). But at the same time, indexing and caching is how we can grow. If you want the site to grow, you want to get it to 1st position on first SERP.
Bingo. They should just be glad that the netrunners, deckers, and console cowboys have found greener pastures. Because they don't want to see what happens when you back creative angry people into a corner
Given that I'm more willing to be a Net Nomad than I am to pay, Reddit 2.0 would have to be self-funding and profitable early on without my direct contribution. I think the best way to do it would be to have per-IP monthly access limits, raised incrementally by tracked linkout clicks from the platform (with a higher rate given for actual conversion actions). That way, you keep operating costs low and ensure that you're profit-focused from day 1. Yes, it's an affiliate ad platform from the start, but it allows for organic content generation from users. Oh, and of course advertisers would be charged to create organic ads in relevant communities. Obviously, with a priority being profit and cost, any software would have to be NIH FOSS, with only a few custom scripts ever created by the devs - this cuts down on costs and dev time. If anyone complains about licensing, ban them. If they try taking you to court, you have ad rev, they don't. You win with a better lawyer and sympathetic judge.
Basically, I would want Reddit as it is today. Or Facebook as it is. The advertising I can block easily is their way of keeping my costs at a rate I'm willing to accept - $0.00/lifetime. I think forcing ad engagement will make some people run to the Fediverse and host their own instance, or join and "donate to" (pay to use) an instance they don't host, but for others, it will help them to build healthier relationships with social media, using it less and thus rationing out their time better, or they'll spend time engaged with ad content and providing real value to the platform, rather than imagined "value" by creating organic content that will need to be stored and indexed on the server.
Frankly, you're incorrect. It's an incredible pain in the neck to try and deal with the Fediverse beyond local content. Without better community merging or centralization, browsing instances becomes no different than dealing with having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes, or talking on forums before we had tabbed browsing. It's incredibly annoying, and pushes people right back to centralized systems.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on this. Yes, active users continues to grow - on already dominant platforms. And by that I mean KBin.social as a platform, not all KBin instances; or Mastodon.Social, or even Lemmy.ML. Yes, there's not a singularity yet, but even this limited plurality shows that it's a pain in the neck to deal with the Fediverse as a whole, so pick your local poison and go for it.
What issues have you specifically noticed with this?
The issue I've noticed first and foremost is that there is more than one identically named group. Don't tell me that rpg@kbin.social, rpg@lemmy.ml, and rpg@foo.bar are different communities. They're identically named communities. I'd rather have as false positive of a gun user's instance with threads about rocket-propelled grenades, rather than having to go to each group to browse. Don't tell me to just use the "subscribed" view. That doesn't pick up everything in a topic, nor does it help me to find those - again, identically named - communities on other servers. Whenever a new server comes online with an RPG community, they'll be in their own corner. They can participate as foreigners with another group, but that's not theirs. There's no central place for hosting these communities. If there was a server set up just to host groups, and the rest were for users, that would make sense. I immediately grew tired, trying to find all of the communities related to my interests so I can subscribe to all. I did that back in the day, joining forums and setting up a personal homepage with frames. In theory anyone can join any group, but they have to find it first.
If devs and leaders of the ActivityPub community are going to continue pushing the idea that everyone can talk to everyone else, we absolutely need some form of community merging for identically-named communities. For instance, a kbin.social user should be able to subscribe to cooking and see posts from cooking@. , not just cooking@kbin.social. That's a UX issue just as much as a technical one.
I wasn't around this far back. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What's the issue with "having mail on three or four non-multiplexed BBSes" ?
Back in those days, BBS mail was less "email" and more "text stored on server". To get all of your mail from multiples, you had to connect to each of the servers in sequence, download your mail, and then read it offline and reply (any good BBS software would remember where itwas from, and offer to call back and send each message). Multiplexing meant that you could have a BBS in the NYC area, it would be able to contact and download from one in, say, PA or wherever, and they could each download threads and messages, aka federated content. The pain has been massively reduced over time, and I'm glad. My next point bounces off yours:
This I remember well. Sounds like you are trying to create an account on each instance and are constantly logging out of one and into the next to keep up on the latest posts and comments. This .. is not really the way to do it.
You're right, except in cases where I want a different psudonymity; my choice. In this case, I can't check for new posts in, continuing with the same example, rpg@. without checking the group from each federated server. Posts are neither mirrored nor transcluded. That's the point I'm getting at. I should be able to just open up m/rpg and have it cover all compatible groups.
I disagree with your latter point. kbin.social has hit a reasonable mass of users to have a strong local community and become a platform unto itself, running on kbin software. I'm not interested in a smaller community. I joined Reddit because it was the largest single-site community on the Web. I want the monolithic community, and I accept the costs that incurs, including ads or ad-first design. Right now, the fediverse is just fragments at the foot of the tower of Babel, each speaking a separate tongue, even if some are intelligible to others.
I don't care about the difference between Mastodo, kbin, & Lemmy. They're web software which are trying to replace a monolith, and have seen imited success. I don't care about political leanings. I'm talking about a UX issue. If you want to defed from a site, and receive no more content, then so be it, that's the right of an Admin.
There's still chaos in terms of instances and softwares. Until we all settle on one software that does the job, and until we have a way to have a single community again, Reddit remains the superior option. There is only one r/RPG, it works on Highlander rules - there can be only one. How many groups in the Fediverse named m/RPG or c/RPG are there? Why must each user be forced to answer that question?
That's what would fix things for me; make the federation 100% behind-the-curtain so that I don't have to think about it. I don't care about the backend, I'm not hosting, the value to me is ad views only, not cash. I'd argue a solid 80% of users on corp-owned social media wouldn't understand even if you simplify it. The fediverse/threadiverse is not a drop-in replacement for Reddit. Until it is, I'll keep one foot in spez's yard. If Meta's Threads product does become an ActivityPub community and solves this issue, I'll move there
.
Apologies for any typos or bad formatting, I ran up against the 5000 character limit, and tried to edit down - and the 'more' popup actually pops under the next comment in my browser. I'm sure I could fix it somehow, but I believe everything is still intelligible.
Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it'd be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I'd doubt they'd form a...
The more that happens, the more fractured the community becomes, and the easier it will be for a new centralized corporate platform to suck up users. That's how Reddit started in the first place, and how Twitter started. Heck, it's even how LJ started. You look at fractured elements of communities, and build a site for the whole community to come together.
Sure, just show me the combined DnD/D&D or TTRPG community | magazine | group. It doesn't exist. There are a hundred, or a thousand, individual groups. That's not a whole community. That's a thousand fractal shards, each one with its own voices, independent of one another. Yes, occasionally they do share content or users, but that happens only rarely and with effort. TTRPG Network, Lemmy.ML, KBin.Social, Mastodon.Social, etc., all have various groups dedicated to RPGs. These groups are not able to be combined.
The inability of these groups to combine and independently organizing is a severe weakness of ActivityPub.
No, what I want is r/RPG - a single, central hub for RPG-related topics. Yes, there are also subs for RPGDesign, DnD, DM advice, etc., but RPG serves as both a central community and as a hub for all those more specific groups. There is no way to have a “hub community” on the Fediverse, or to efficiently find all groups which share interests. Groups which had a “largest community” on Reddit will now find themselves shattered and separated. Sure, you can say Federation will save them, but it really won’t. All federation means is that now instead of one community, there’s one per server, and you have to know to subscribe to each and every one of them.
Sure, there’s Mastodon’s Lists feature, which works like a Multireddit, but that’s honestly a lot of effort, and doesn’t cover Lemmy or kbin posts like this one. We need a way to automerge common communities, at least in the user’s view.
I don't think you're correct in your theory. I fully expect the Fediverse as a whole, with the exception of a few very tiny instances that won't have public signups, will deal with the problems that other social media have in the same way - ads, sponsored posts, monetization of user data, etc.. in the way the Internet accelerates, I expect it to happen within two years.
I don't think it's going to be "singular bad actors" in this case. I think it's going to be every server owner realizing why the situation became what it is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit. When operating and development costs stretch beyond the grasp of donations, when the number of users far outstretches the number of donors and customers, server owners will have to seek out ways to monetize users. So, sure, you'll have people who are willing to put in the investment to launch their own server and federate as they see fit, rather than pay for the service. But you'll have a lot more people who are unwilling to pay.
That means ads and paid content. That means login walls and paywalled content, "premium" access and features, etc. I expect that every large Fediverse server will end up that way. Either that or the way they'll stay ad-free is to kick off the users and keep only the paying customers (these people will be called "donors" so they don't expect any benefit for their money). After all, kicking a user out of one instance of the Fediverse doesn't have the impact that it does on Reddit. Heck, kicking a thousand out doesn't. There's every other instance's customers and users still to talk with. There's always the ability for those people to invest in the platform with their own instance, or join one with a smaller number of allowed (non-paying) users.
It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit....
As long as it doesn't descend into extreme far left buffoonery, I think I'm happy. Then again, I've come to realize that regardless of personal political beliefs, it's the buffoonery that's the big issue. People who can do nothing to make real change take things entirely too far in arguments with others who are similarly powerless. The problem is that we've been so manipulated and driven so far apart that what seems like common sense and basic human decency to one side of the aisle is radical buffoonery to the other. I don't see a fast solution to that. Rebuilding connection across the country will take elections that everyone trusts, electing officials who work towards bipartisan solutions and the service of the public good rather than an agenda. Too bad I don't see the major parties being interested in that.
Then again, I'm of the opinion that we should go back to at least one element of our original system - the president shouldn't have a slate in place for election, so that whoever takes #2 in the popular vote becomes VP.
See, I don't think it's likely to work out that way. I think a lot of people think we're more divided than we are - and the President & VP will both work to their own profit before their party line (hopefully), and that should lead to cooperation. Granted, it's cooperation that screws the little guy, but there's at least a hope of visible bipartisanship.
It's still out there - waiting. There's a bunch of active servers, and I have Ambassador for Pale Moon installed. I just never have cause to use it instead of Discord anymore. I think that says more about me than IRC.
It's because very suddenly, users of RIF and Apollo are going to be locked out of Reddit, and people think they'll migrate here, rather than going to the official Reddit mobile software (as a RedReader user, I've switched over), or going to Facebook/Instagram.
It's a fundamental question about society: which is more prevalent, fear or laziness? They had no reason to move until their program stopped working. Now, it's not going to work anymore. But I don't believe we'll see a massive adoption wave. People are still confused about the nature of the Fediverse, and they're too scared by their ignorance to get over it and bite the bullet.
Unfortunately, those that do take the plunge will find that most Fediverse client software is in beta, or less than fully functional. Laziness will keep them away. Fear will push them to other monolithic platforms. So my thought is that it's going to drive traffic to Meta's properties for the time being, at least at this time.
The problem of any social network that starts organically. If you're invested in the community and not specifically in the software, when people move on, you will too.
There's already porn in the fediverse. I don't see a problem with it existing, but it's always bothered me when porn and social media get mixed. That's not necessarily because of prudishness or shame, but rather the fact that social media often employs dark patterns of addiction, and porn addiction can become very real, very quickly. I think we need to be careful about it, and I think there should be an onus on platforms as well as producers to help protect the vulnerable against addiction and the downward spiral.
I'm sure users will step forward if they care. Otherwise, it's just a campaign optimization at work. Limit the breadth of organic content to deepen the brand-friendly content and push more paid media into the feed.
You misunderstand what their product is at this point. Their primary product is advertising conversions by site users and visitors, with a minor secondary in user data - actual "content" is a distant third. By removing or restricting the means by which users can avoid interactions with the customer base, they drive traffic to the customer-sponsored content on the site. Yes, what they're doing will reduce organic traffic; that's the point. They would be very happy if every post visible to a user was a paid post.
Reddit is an advertising platform which allows user created content. I expect the majority of the Fediverse to go that way too within two years, regardless of Meta Threads. This is the Internet. This is what it is, what it was always going to be, and how it will be going forward.
It's that one clause that's the whole hangup right now.
as long as they're not doing anything that gets Reddit in trouble
Reading between the lines of everything Spez said, there's one abundantly clear fact - Reddit is not profitable - and that's a big problem, one the board and everyone is pushing to see fixed at all costs. Investors and ownership expect ROI, customers expect ROAS. They're not getting it, and they're getting to the end of the rope. I believe we're coming to a real existential issue for Reddit now - either they get profitable and drag the company over the line to the IPO (so that all the investors can cash out), or there's no more Reddit. Either you work with the company to bring profits, or you're a cost needing to be cut.
Currently, on the main instance, people have created 40191 accounts (+214 marked as deleted). I don't know how many are active because I don't monitor it, but once again, I greet all of you here :) In recent days, the traffic on the website has been overwhelming. It's definitely too much for the basic docker-compose setup,...
Same song, new instruments, that's all. Just brace for the ads and the monetization. Be ready to be a customer rather than a user, or be ready to move on.
You know, I'm honestly not very concerned about that. As long as it's not money or energy I have to expend, I'm fine with whatever needs to happen, including the 'move on' option.
So... it's been a while now since the great exodus. How are you all doing my fellow refugees? (kbin.social) en
I made my home here permanently now. It seems like such a friendlier place but how are you all doing?
RNA for the first time recovered from an extinct species - Stockholm University (su.se) en
RNA for the first time recovered from an extinct species A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct...
Reddit’s menswear hub is the latest casualty of its battle with moderators | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com) en
Reddit may have won by shutting down the protest against its API changes, but not without lasting damage to its relationship with its users.
Reddit down? (redditstatus.com)
Seems like Reddit is experiencing issues at the moment, maybe a good time for more users to find their way to Lemmy communities?
Fertilizing the oceans with iron could help remove a gigaton of carbon dioxide per year (interestingengineering.com) en
Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and there's a relatively easy way to boost the world's populations.
What is Reddit CEO Steve Huffman doing? (theverge.com) en
One of the weirder phenomena of the low interest rate era in tech was a tendency to see companies primarily as investments. The goal was not to have a functional business, but an exit, often via IPO or acquisition. I have begun to wonder if that explains what Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has been up to lately....
Reddit has started assigning power mods to subs they took over. (imgur.com) en
Not much else needs to be said tbh. Fuck Spez....
'Breakthrough' geothermal tech produces 3.5 megawatts of carbon-free power | Engadget (engadget.com) en
An energy company called Fervo says it has achieved a breakthrough in geothermal technology.
An invasive fish with teeth, that can breathe air, live up to three days outside of water, move short distances on land, and grow three feet long has been found in Louisiana (axios.com) en
via: https://tildes.net/~science/18ay/an_invasive_fish_with_teeth_that_can_breathe_air_live_up_to_three_days_outside_of_water_move_short
How come there is very little Kbin SEO for individual posts? Also, what are tags/badges? (kbin.social) en
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain things, but It's been about a month since I've started the process of creating a magazine to support the reddit/discord community I've helped mod for the past 4 years... but I've noticed that zero posts show up in google search....
Rip Teddit (kbin.social) en
Today I just noticed, after trying to convert a reddit link (from this sub!), that teddit is no longer working....
Reddit threatens the mods of r/CyberpunkGame (the main subreddit for Cyberpunk 2077). Mods decide to go down in a blaze of glory, whole sub agrees. (old.reddit.com) en
Surprising nobody, Reddit Corp threatening a gaming sub of a fanatically anti-corporate video game doesn't go as they'd hoped....
People in /r/redditalternatives are talking about a "Reddit 2.0" What website would fill that role? (kbin.social) en
On Reddit at reddit.com/r/redditalternatives, people are talking about a "Reddit 2.0." What do you suggest?
While larger, more general communities are thriving on the Fediverse - I'm missing out on the niche communities (kbin.social) en
Gaming, news, tech, general literature. All of these are somewhat thriving, with a steady influx of posts and comments. At the same time, the userbase is sorely lacking for more niche communities. In my case it'd be stuff like poetry, yoga, religion, linguistics, meditation. Or many other communities I'd doubt they'd form a...
The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized (kbin.social) en
You are in the wrong place....
Unlike previous attempts at trying reddit alternatives (like Voat), kbin and much of the lemmyverse doesn’t seem to be plagued with extreme far right buffoonery. (kbin.social) en
It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit....
It was fun while it lasted! (kbin.social) en
Lemmy and kbin are gonna get all jacked up in the next couple of days. It was a good ride until everything settles down!
Porn Historically Decides Tech Adoption... Fediverse? (kbin.social) en
Historically, porn has organically decided which platform or formats become dominant. It's incredibly anti-censorship, but walks many fine lines....
r/TIHI has been banned for being unmoderated. (old.reddit.com) en
This single sentence is the best summary I have seen yet of the way Reddit admins/corporate is treating moderators and supporters: "The beatings will continue until morale improves" (media.kbin.social) en
The North American Spez, in his native habitat. (media.kbin.social) en
On The State of /r/PICS: Profanity, Offensive Content, and An Open Letter : r/pics (teddit.adminforge.de) en
Keep up the good work r/pics, this last one had me wondering if you were actually r/maliciouscompliance !
/kbin server update - or how the server didn't blow up (kbin.social) en
Currently, on the main instance, people have created 40191 accounts (+214 marked as deleted). I don't know how many are active because I don't monitor it, but once again, I greet all of you here :) In recent days, the traffic on the website has been overwhelming. It's definitely too much for the basic docker-compose setup,...