lavender

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 current 503 page reads:

503 Server error - We're working on this, check back in a few days.

Perhaps days should be changed to something else? A moment, a while... etc. in order not to scare people away whenever the site is being tinkered with. Uptime remains an important metric for many, and 'days' is a harsh timeframe.

I am assuming image hosting will be quite difficult to scale if kbin keeps growing exponentially. Currently, I believe @ernest is taking care of hosting?

I remember IMGUR being created to aid Reddit/Redditors to host images without much hassle, but what would be the best way to tackle this for kbin? Use 3rd party hosting like imgur and the like?

Regarding posting media, there are still a few functionalities that could use some work. The video button does not seem to work, and images do not respect aspect ratio in the main kbin feeds. In my opinion clicking an image in the feed should expand it (much like Reddit Enhancement Suite allowed), or the button to expand it should be more visible.

Dive into a desert world from the creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama!
Play as the Fiend Prince, Beelzebub, and set off on an adventure using your wits, brawn, and vehicles to save #SANDLAND!

Quite excited for this!

The whole reddit situation has been quite the storm, certainly for people fed up and looking for an excuse to move on.

Reddit was in the fortunate position that it started out What You See Is What You Get -- Compare new reddit to old reddit. Click link of interest, get content. These Fediverse instances harken back to that, and I am happy for it. The spread out nature of the fediverse however is a pro and a con. Information and content will be less accessible and more difficult to interact with, but at least it is not _in_accessible instantly if a storm brews - unless folks decide to defederate.

However, another positive for Reddit has been its name: it rolls off the tongue, it is memorable enough, and accessible/understandable to people not tech-savvy.

In this regard, Lemmy (in my opinion) has a foot in the door opposed to KBIN. What does KBIN stand for? How am I going to convince fellow enthusiasts to 'kbin' something? Lemmy just feels like more of a verbal substitute.

Having spent some time waiting for the nice folks to gather in the correct place, I'm really rooting for kbin to gain a foothold. Even more so now the actual Developers of Lemmy are showing their cards and dangerous ideologies.

I hope more people become aware of these issues with Lemmy, and will flood to a more neutral place like kbin, or perhaps another.