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founded 1 year ago

Kbin is currently designed to encourage brigading. The fix is easy. (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by 10A@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social

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The current default "Homepage" value is "All". That makes sense for users with zero subscribed magazines, so they see something.

But for users with one or more subscribed magazines, the default value for "Homepage" needs to be "Subscriptions".

That's partially just because subscriptions mean little if the default frontpage ignores them. But there's a more important reason than that.

The current situation is that posts in m/Conservative are heavily downvoted, and barely upvoted. (Whatever your politics may be, consider if this was happening to you.) As more ex-redditors join, this problem is likely to worsen.

Eventually moderators need better controls, to say things like "Only members can vote", etc.

But for now, a very easy fix is to change the default value of "Homepage" to be "Subscriptions". Of course, "All" should still be a selectable option for those who prefer it.

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[–] Xuerian@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This level of control is generally handled at the instance level.

If you want to host a magazine and control interactions on it, host your own instance.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There should only be one instance IMHO. And it should be able to support widely diverse communities.

[–] Xuerian@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

kbin is part of the Fediverse. It is one instance of many.

I draw your attention to the sidebar:

Create your own instance

Clone repo and develop fediverse

Several communities who have more difficult interactions with others have already followed this route.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Encouraging fracturing into factions does no good for anyone. The internet needs a frontpage, and for years that was reddit. Now it seems to be kbin, maybe. Under the hood it may be a distributed system, but in practice normal people want a single website where a wide diversity of topics and opinions is embraced and protected.

[–] Sausage@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

The internet needs a frontpage

Does it though? The Fediverse feels a lot different to Reddit, which many here are taking as a positive. As others have mentioned, if you want a conservative safe space then go make one.

[–] Xuerian@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe, but it won't be kbin, or other Fediverse sites.

It's a common enough opinion to want one site to handle everything, but that's not how this is set up.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly I think it is. Much as the underlying architecture expects federation, each instance competes in a market of commoditized goods, which leads to coalescence. So if the fediverse thrives at all, it will be with one giant instance. Perhaps there'll always be a few other tiny instances for nerds (I use the word lovingly) who value that sort of thing, but normal people don't understand the concept of an "instance", and just want to show up at a .com to feast on data.

At any rate, even if you're right about federation, any social media service should seek to accommodate a wide diversity of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

[–] Xuerian@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

instance competes in a market of commoditized goods, which leads to coalescence.

Any user on one instance can interact freely with users and content on another instance as if they were on that instance, unless there are specific restrictions put in place, or one of the two instances has blocked the other. This is rare and often to prevent brigading, as your main post complained of.

So, not really. Normal people understand the concept of email. I don't agree with the "It's too complicated" suggestion. It's been presented confusingly in this mad rush, sure.

At any rate, even if you're right about federation, any social media service should seek to accommodate a wide diversity of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

I think that's entirely up to each instance. Not every instance has to be about everything or for everyone. Again, that's the point.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With regard to federation, that's true, but consider the bigger picture. A major news outlet discusses the up-and-coming website kbin, and a hundred million people show up to create an account. A popular search engine returns search results linking to kbin, and nobody says "I could click on that, but I have an account at some other instance, so I'll just manually edit the URL." The bigger picture is that the world wants a single instance.

With regard to the diversity of of ideas, opinions, and perspectives being up to each instance, I suppose I agree with you in principle, though I would find it deeply disappointing if any platform intentionally wanted to create a hivemind and actively silence dissenting voices. But if that's where I am, then I suppose I'll have to leave.

[–] Xuerian@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

A popular search engine returns search results linking to kbin, and nobody says "I could click on that, but I have an account at some other instance, so I'll just manually edit the URL." The bigger picture is that the world wants a single instance.

I think this is a valid issue and I think it's something that deserves some attention if it isn't on the mind of developers already.

From a generic developer perspective I see no reason why it would be impossible or even that difficult to improve the roaming experience.

[–] hellequin67@lemmy.fmhy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't really need to understand the concepts of an instance within the federation system because ultimately you join whatever instance you want and search and then you can subscribe to anything you want it doesn't matter whether it's a one entire instance or one tiny instance in the federation.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

There are already many observable instances (pardon the pun) of confusion, even among us early adopters. Time will tell if you're right or if I am.