this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

founded 1 year ago
 

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

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Don't do the work of monopolizing for them! The great thing about the fediverse is that we can all spread out and it doesn't really affect the user experience but it sure makes it a lot harder for wall street to buy a large portion of the network.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I actually started with an account on Fedia.io before coming here, but they're down like 90% of the time and I fear it might be too much for Jerry (operator of that instance) to keep up with, at least for now. But having an account on multiple servers that I can bounce between when such things happen has been nice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I fully intend to self host once the software matures a bit, so there's that. Hopefully that comes sooner rather than later.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't entirely disagree with the post, but it could have been worded much better, the title in particular.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Meta reached out to Kev from Fosstodon. https://fosstodon.org/@kev

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I plan on switching instances whenever account transfer becomes feasible! But as it stands right now I'd rather not have to get my account set up all over again for another instance that might potentially go down or make radical changes. That was the very thing that put me off of Mastodon, before they added migration, and I'd rather not repeat that again. (If you have more time and energy than I do, and you're thinking about manually migrating - absolutely do so)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

KBin has been appealing to some over Lemmy because of the similarness to Reddit and less of a learning curve due to federation.

I'm a proponent of spreading out but it does have its faults as of current: fractured content across many similar communities, more server management needed (though less cost per server). Discovering other instances from your own is harder, defederation and server politics and bots in some cases.

I like how it is in Lemmy hopping between servers, but honestly some don't like to that and that's fine. People on the largest servers should definitely support the server admins financially if they can.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

@Gargleblaster Many thanks, this post is as much enlightening as it frightens me. Those who wished ill for us exist and have the means to do so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Heck, I'm reading and replying from Lemmy.ca, and subscribing to a kbin Magazine was relatively painless.

I've been meaning to set up a kbin account so I can compare, but Lemmy has been good enough that I haven't bothered yet.

Either way, thanks to Federation, kbin & Lemmy aren't really competing like Digg and Reddit back in the day.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with this but also I have an account on lemmy mastodon and kbin. the only reason i use kbin so much is because it has Threads, Microblogging and magazines. I really like the microblogging cause i can see all the mastodon and other people. yea but we do need to go to smaller servers and still interact. Whatever Meta touches turns to shit!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kbin can see lemmy pretty sure. I am on a lemmy instance and can see this magazine so

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I already have a few accounts on different Lemmy instances but you might have a point there. I'll see about other kbin instances, although this one is already cozy for me. Hopefully won't run into federation issues when going to another one like this very one had in the week of the Rexxit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m a little hesitant to put on my tinfoil hat here.

But maybe it’s best that the super users kind of spread out a bit.

Spez might not give a shit that we leave, but Meta is probably all over this. “How can we make our content better than failing Reddit?”

Then again, I don’t know shit about fuck.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One thing I'll say is that both kbin and Lemmy need improvements in order to recommend smaller instances. The UX around being the first in the server to subscribe to a sub is really, really bad. Seriously, try it if you haven't yet. Magazine search won't find the sub. It won't show up on the front page. If you try and visit the sub, you'll get a 404 and no way to subscribe. You have to know specifically how to search for the sub in order to get the option to subscribe, and even then you won't see any existing content in it.

The problem is less impactful in larger instances because there's a better chance that you're not the first or that the sub was basically "seeded" for major instances. It's a terrible divide in UX.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I agree with all that you've said

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That doesn't make any sense. Why would Facebook be interested in buying existing instances? The code is open source, they can use it without asking permission. Their server infrastructure is way better that anything we have. And our user base is ridiculously small compared to theirs (Instagram has more than one billion users!). The danger of Facebook taking over the Fediverse is not that they buy instances, it's that they Embrace-Extend-Extinguish us.

That being said, I do think that we "are using the Fediverse wrong", and that we should gravitate to smaller instances of like-minded people. This would make much easier instance-level moderation and server load, and de-federation would make more sense. Now there are a bunch of generalist big instance (kbin.social, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works) that are federating/defederating for reasons that aren't completely transparent to their users. But if you have, say, a small doglove.rs instance and a small catlove.rs instance, they can defederate themselves without impacting users that are not involved in the beef amongst the instances.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When I read the dev post the other day, I thought of the possible issue with servers. Stress and particularly financing. Yes, users could donate, but I feel it's not sustainable long term.
Hope account migration could come soon. Preferably across Fediverse. Not only within Kbin.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Is there not a way that folks with server access can run a duplicate of this instance and then put it behind a load balanced proxy? If kbin does not support this, I say we help with the code to make this a possibility.

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