Kbin, FUD, and Tribalism - Where do we go from here?
Kbin, FUD, and Tribalism - Where do we go from here?
It finally happened: many Reddit 3rd party apps have officially shut down. With it comes an influx of users looking for a new place.
With the influx come new points of view, new kinds of users with different expectations. This change is already visible, with obvious trolls and attention seekers throwing out bait. What if there is more to it however?
Browsing casually I noticed more and more kbin posts critical of its development, its functioning, and the speed at which @ernest is able to implement updates.
I find it odd that, while denouncing kbin for its current flaws in deployment (despite being clearly stated to be in alpha) the owner of that instance proceeds to praise Lemmy and wave away concerns regarding its devs who
(Lemmy devs) are willing to create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of your beliefs.
despite having proven that their politics do affect their product.
"Just defederate" in my opinion also is not an argument. It's closing your eyes to a problem propagated by those who benefit from influence from the shadows - on both sides of the political spectrum.
Hence my mention of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and Tribalism.
Pushing users towards a preferred platform (in this case, Lemmy) by seeding threadiverse posts with statements such as
- kbin isn't ready
- kbin won't have the same engagement as Lemmy
- the single kbin dev @ernest doesn't have enough time/skill
- it will never be as good as Reddit
will just lead to Reddit 2.0 painted in red and yellow. As kbin users, we should combat this kind of behavior.
We're all here for a better threadiverse, and a singular means of interacting will not be beneficial to its growth. The reason we're here is because we want a Reddit-like environment, not a single 'frontpage of the internet'. Tribalism in the threadiverse will get us nowhere fast.
Perhaps it was unintentional that kbin was not federating properly with Lemmy instances. What I am afraid of is, knowing the track record of Lemmy devs, it follows a scary trajectory, reminiscent of a few tried and true tactics Reddit and others have used before.
I'd like to state that I am not unbiased. I am helping out with Artemis, a kbin app currently in development.
I do not want to support or make use of Lemmy for many reasons. However, I could not care less if someone is from a Lemmy instance, or if I interact with them in that same space. If I see Lemmy.ml/Lemmygrad.ml behind their name, I will be cautious of their intentions however.
Let's hope we, not as 'rexxiters', 'kbinauts' or 'lemmings', but as fediverse users can actually create a product that makes the entire internet better, and share it with everyone, for free, regardless of our beliefs.
The Lemmy devs are actively asking for donations and every Lemmy instance - apollo.town and vlemmy.net included links to the
join-lemmy.orglanding page with donation links, so I'm a bit more wary of the whole construct. Perhaps the instance admins mean well - but at the end of the day, they and their instances are soliciting links that finance tankies. That's a no-go for me personally. But each to their own.Some of the Kbin criticism in those posts is valid, though.
Kbin is not "production ready" software and it's missing a lot of Quality of Life features for instance admins.
It's hard to deploy, hard to to troubleshoot, operate and update. It's not packaged. We users are missing moderation and migration tools necessary to deal with the federated nature of the content (moving instances, content filtering etc)But such is life on the bleeding edge.
I fully understand if fedi-admins don't want to spend all their free time fiddling with the instance. Many of them are volunteers. It's their choice and no one can fault them for installing Lemmy instead.
Ernest has stated multiple times the project is just a prototype and it very clearly is. People are working on it though. The tracker isn't exploding with issues anymore and Ernest seems to be back working on pull requests instead of battling with the server load, There's 53 of them currently - and they're from multiple contributors. It's going to take some time, but seems there's good work being done - by multiple devs.
Starting a software flamewar between Lemmy and Kbin seems incredibly silly and unproductive though, so I'll just say this - the fediverse puts lot of decision making power into the hands of users. There is choice. So use the stuff that works for you personally. No need to build walls, throw FUD or talk down the other software product or act as a knight in shining white armor for the one you happen to use and prefer.
There's space for everyone and there's space for multiple software projects and products. There's no division.
Your last line is what I am trying to establish here, however I have noticed hostility from Lemmy supporters. This is what I mean with ‘as kbin users we should prevent this’. Such bad faith posting should be deflated or best nipped in the bud.
The points regarding kbin’s present state I do understand, but in that case I think it’s a matter of managing expectations for new users.
One of the things that really seemed to spook new Mastodon users late last year was the fact that there were multiple microblogging platforms on the Fediverse. Telling someone who lamented the lack of quote-tweets, for instance, that Calckey and Misskey had quotes, and they could use those instead, brought people out of the woodwork to argue somewhat vigorously that people should kind of shut up about both the missing features and the alternative piecds of software.
They wanted Mastodon to win.
I partially wonder if it's the centralized, disconnected social web that's to blame. You can't read Facebook posts from Twitter, so the idea that there was no meaningful different to Mastodon users if people they followed used Calckey maybe just wasn't something they groked, and they saw the suggestion of options as a threat?
I'm really not sure, but that kind of behaviour went away with time.
My worry is that Lemmy does as Mastodon does, and doesn't display the instance type of other users. Most microblogs other than Mastodon show what kind of service a post came from. It keeps people aware of what the Fediverse really is - people using many different bits of kit to talk to each other. Meanwhile, on Mastodon it just looks like everyone is using Mastodon, and that the Fediverse is Mastodon, and discussion of anything else is an attack on the Fediverse.
I would like to see instance signifies on other users in kbin and in Lemmy, but if the Lemmy Devs are financially motivated to hide that they're usersaare interacting eith other services... Well, I don't like that.
Give it time to settle down. Mastodon vs. Pleroma vs. Misskey, and recently Akkoma vs. Calckey, etc etc etc. all of this stuff isn't really new. Use this. No use that.
Just use what you like. I prefer /kbin. Likely will always. If someone judges me for using a software they don't, then I probably didn't want to talk to them anyway.
Also keep in mind that /kbin was in very, very slow development for a very long time before a lot of things all happened at once. Very much a passion project. Like this is someone building a shed in their garage for their garden except somehow now suddenly 50 thousand people are in your garden and they all want in.
kbin isn't ready
It isn't? Its rough, but since most hosting issues where solved its been a stable and nice experience.
kbin won't have the same engagement as Lemmy
Who cares, both are just ActivityPub and are compatible with each other.
the single kbin dev @ernest doesn't have enough time/skill
One ernest is better then 100 tankies.
it will never be as good as Reddit
Now that is clearly clownish, the bar is very low when it comes to being "as good as reddit"
I find the kbin website to work rather well, it’s good work. Also the backend seems stable for now, I didn’t notice any hiccups recently when commenting. If things can be made simpler and more intuitive over time, it does seem like a viable alternative.
Same. And I also don't even feel like I need a mobile app for kbin. It works just as well on my mobile browser as on my comp. No styles tho.
Why do we want another reddit? Why don't we want something better/different/more engaging than reddit? Reddit has made the mistakes, we can learn from them. And even better, we don't have angels to make happy at the end of it all. Just us.
In my opinion, Reddit did many things right and there is no shame to copy what Reddit did right, and now we have the chance to improve where Reddit did not want to improve on.
yeah, i find kbin is less buggy than lemmy. but lemmy has more features. hopefully lemmy and kbin can work together for the better
On your first line, agreed 100%.
I don’t understand what people are seeing in terms of issues. Maybe once or twice my comment or someone else’s seemed to not be fully synchronised. And Kbin had some notification issues (processing backlog), but the federating problems seem far worse on the Lemmy side. Lemmy has outright protocol bugs.
I wonder if a lot of people are seeing the Kbin error message and assume that is “federation”, when really it’s a host of things that still need to be ironed out site-wise. For example, there is clearly a maximum file size allowed for a photo, but I don’t think there’s a warning coded in there yet, so try to post something too large and you get a site error, reduce the size and it works 100% of the time. That’s not federation, that’s simply Kbin being very new.
And lo and behold it seems like Lemmy’s fault the Kbin isn’t federating properly (blocking inbound Kbin traffic).
Politicizing the topic through the means of tribalism is certainly an objective of interests against the fediverse so undoubtedly we will see more of that happening as unfortunate as that is. There are absolutely parties interested in pushing manufactured division and creating "us vs them" camps. I certainly hope that most users steer away from the quite frankly silly discussions of why one is better than the other. At the end of the day it should simply be a personal choice based on perhaps aesthetics or some other set of minuscule factors rather than politics. In regards to kbin and it's currently limited functionality: many of today's large platforms began in a very similar fashion. I personally enjoy the quirkiness of kbin and my proverbial hat is off to Ernest for the effort he has put into this.
Well said. Aesthetics are another important factor for me, one of the reasons I would not consider a platform such as Squabbles for example. Meanwhile, others are gushing at the prospect of having a ‘new Reddit’ UI experience.
I feel it's also important to add that, at least in my understanding, Ernest never meant to be next large content aggregator CEO. From what I gather, he is a dev first and foremost, who was publicly alpha-testing what he built as an alternative to lemmy. Somehow this test instance ended up being a reddit migration outlet which he is now trying to keep alive all the while developing its underlying software. That's at least two substantially different full-time jobs with very diverse objectives. It's a miracle it all works as well as it does, tbh.
I think it's a misunderstanding to think of the fediverse as an amorphous soup of servers where we all "just get along". The strength of federation is that everyone can have an instance that suits them using software that suits them. Instances can federate with instances that suit them. There will be instances that federate with everyone some that federate with most, some who federate with a handful and some that are entirely private. There will be some that that finance themselves by donation, some that may be paid-for, some that may use advertising.
It's all good.
We won't stay on kbin forever anyway. Let's face it, if we are on kbin it's because we fled reddit and we saw that lemmy was...weird. As soon as a sane other implementation of a forum/microblogging using activitypub is proven to be robust there will be another migration. And it will probably involve actors like Facebook and co.
Now that people made the initial jump of leaving reddit they will be more inclined to making another jump to a platform that suit them better.
But it won't be just about technicalities but also about language and community. I'm not a fan of the lemmy agenda, but I'm also not a fan of the american soft power leaking in every sub. And to fight this a regional instance of activitypub tools will be very welcome.
@PabloDiscobar hi, just a problem of understanding. What do you mean with "american soft power leaking in every sub"?
Yeh that's a little bit of word salad to invoke emotions.
I am presuming @PabloDiscobar means that in general, online spaces gravitate towards American-focused content posted by Americans, for Americans, moderated by Americans. The web is a different place when you're about 6 hours ahead of the main content generators. Other kinds of views and experiences get posed, but get washed away the moment the East Coast wakes up.
An example is Reddit's 'WorldNews' sub mainly focusing on American issues. As a Dutch person, I would not consider some Texan individual's issues with city council world news.
I mean the same thing that happened to reddit: the intrusion of american culture in the platform.
Is it normal that europeans know the american constitution better than their own? No, this is the result of soft power.
This is a known concept in Europe, some people tend to import problems from remote countries into their own. How many times did a subject completely unique to america popped up in a discussion where it wasn't relevant? Very often. Now take the opposite, when did americans stopped talking about the subject of like microtransactions in gaming and started to talk about Italian politics instead? Never. But start talking about any of the subject below and you will unleash more and more comments. Even if it's among europeans.
Example: gun laws, we all have an opinion about american gun laws. Even as europeans we have an opinion about american gun laws. But do you have an opinion about Greek gun laws?
another example: prisons
another example: no cake for lgbtq
another example: gerrymandering
So far the noise level is low on kbin, but it's growing steadily, I can see it. It is inherent to America, (and somehow uk). They have a business in making people mad, in feeding them anything that will polarize them and make them angry. And of course people will talk about these subjects on their social networks. The net result is that we end up talking and talking about america. That's why I'm talking about regionalization of instances. It's about talking with people who will join because they are interested in a specific subject, but will eventually end up discussing about other things which will still be relevant to you, to where you live. We can only care so much about the governor of Florida.
I agree on this, too. Kbin is a weird name for masses to adapt, for example. We're back in the Wild West regarding this form of social media, and the result of that will hopefully be innovation and reiteration of established standards.
Hard agree on the American soft power, too. I was surprised there were so many German instances on the fediverse already. I don't really want to interact with Dutch posts though, so if those pop up that's a hard filter from me.
With eyes on the future of the fediverse, I would prefer not ending up with another Facebook-like situation where 'one place' is the 'default' place - where the 'default' place is run by people less trustworthy than Mark Zuckerberg.
Kbin is just the name of the software though (and appropriately, of ernest's main instance), you can create an instance and call it whatever. If you want to direct someone to terraria forums you don't mention phpbb3 or whatever it's using, it's just forums.terraria.org. I hope it ends up being the same way for kbin and lemmy down the line, it doesn't matter what you use - you still get to see all content.
For example, warframe's community is on dormi.zone. It uses lemmy in the background but for a casual user that doesn't really matter at all.
Whats wrong with Dutch posts?
I actually like seeing the posts in other languages. Imagine what using traditional social media like Reddit was like for other countries? Why are English speakers suddenly unable to cope when the tables are turned? (In general, not saying that’s you!)
Personally, I’d love some kind of built-in translation options. Tag the different language but allow an auto-translate user setting so everything can be switched to one’s native language.
I love the idea of interacting with the parts of the world, or speakers, that don’t participate in English.
With eyes on the future of the fediverse, I would prefer not ending up with another Facebook-like situation where 'one place' is the 'default' place - where the 'default' place is run by people less trustworthy than Mark Zuckerberg.
It won't. There will be different federations with different politics, specially on the NSFW content, corporatism level and global militantism. All these instances will be incompatible and will defederate and refederate differently.
You will have a Microsoft instance, which will never federate with google or facebook or amazon or Apple. They won't share their customers. Lower brands will probably federate for techsupport for example, etc. This will be interesting to watch.
You mean that people who left Reddit due to commercialism go back to corporate-owned SNS? You might be right but I'm not in. Apollo was a one man project. I'm pretty sure the Fed UI can be nailed right by kbin enthusiasts.
Same for me, there is just no way.
I do think we‘ll eventually have some sort of split among corporate/anti-corporate instances in the fediverse as companies like Meta begin to intrude and some defederate while others do not. Similar to how it is now with the tankie instance and some defederating from them. In which case, I‘ll be hanging out somewhere among the anti-corporate instances.
My take on the fediverse is that it‘s all about enabling people to find a community which feels comfortable and if it doesn‘t exist, there is the tools to build it.
Regional federation makes the most sense to me as an endgame, as well.
I don't want to visit (or tell people to visit) @fart.dingleberry.fuck because it has the best news discussion about my area.
All I know is...I found a home here after leaving Reddit for good (as of yesterday my account is gone).
My initial move away was to Lemmy.world. But after finding some pretty glaring bugs including one that seemed to be a big security bug, I decided to delete my account there and try this out. I'm happy here. It's not perfect, but it's not broken as I found with my Lemmy experience.
I honestly don't care where people end up, so long as it's federated, open, and welcoming of everyone that have good intentions.
There is an important distinction that we must make. Community vs application.
My experience is like yours, made an account on lemmy, beehaw and here. When we saw the Reddit writing on the wall. The community here has been so much fun interacting with, that I have mostly stayed here.
The software is in its infancy and that is exciting. Tricky and maybe a little unstable, but conceptually exactly what I have wanted for ages. It will get there eventually. Ernest and team has been doing a spectacular job keeping the loghts on.
I expect that we will get many different aggregators for federated content as the platform matures.
Yep, the fediverse GROWS by having competition, not shrinks. Kbin is still in beta but it works well and I am excited for its future.
@[email protected]
i love both lemmy and kbin, with a clear preference for the latter for many reasonswhile i think that it is good to keep in mind that lemmy lead dev dessalines is in fact a tankie, we should be glad that lemmy does exist at all - lemmy is bearing the brunt of the recent reddit migration to the fediverse, and kbin benefits from this situation
also i am glad that kbin mastermind ernest wants to keep kbin as compatible to lemmy as possible
in many ways, the reddit migration is of different nature compared to the twitter migration last year: users can choose between two different platforms catering to their needs, rather than overwhelmingly depending on one platform only, as in the case of mastodon #fediverse #kbin #lemmy #mastodon
Fair points! Glad to have a choice, at least. Even though some people like to think otherwise and astroturf a lot.
Ernest isn't alone anymore 😎
lemmy devs politics is not reflected in the software. as long as that remains the case, i really don't see why we should just stop using both reddit and lemmy and wait in hope that kbin will some day be ready for a wider audience. It doesn't really make sense, not even from an idealistic point of view. We need the tool. Now. Not tomorrow, not in a year. Now.
Joss Whedon may be an utter asshat, doesn't mean I will stop telling everyone to watch Firefly and use every opportunity I can find to reference it. Why would I? It's the greatest show ever made!
What I mean is, when kbin is ready, if it ever will be, there is nothing stopping people to move if they'd like, all the content is federated with lemmy anyway and what platform we use within the fediverse is entirely up for choice.