The branding for kbin is perfect for capturing the reddit migrators. The biggest friction point for the Fediverse is choosing an instance. If I want to join Lemmy, googling Lemmy takes me to a landing page with no join button, telling me to go to these other sites. Some of these sites even actively discourage signups, creating so many places for a new user to churn.
Also, see the cases where the admins of a few Lemmy instances act badly: now the brand of every other instance is tarnished.
If I want to join kbin, I go to kbin, and I signup. How easy is that? I personally think this is why kbin has been getting a lot of traffic compared to Lemmy instances, and this benefit is lost when other kbin instances begin popping up.
In my opinion, it makes way more sense to market the instances individually rather than as a whole. Federation can be discovered at the users own pace, instead of being the main draw which will always be the content hosted. This does add a bit of a prisoner’s dilemma, but I do think it would end up benefitting the ecosystem as a whole.
This. Federated services always felt daunting to get into like which instance do I pick? can I see all the content from whichever one? I heard about rogue mods/admins which one is safe? etc. but with kbin it’s just: sign up for kbin. There’s also fedia which is basically just alt-kbin lol. Very easy.
My only concern is how kbin will connect to the rest of the lemmy instances, some of my favorite subreddits seem to have migrated to different instances, and I think it’ll benefit everyone if there was a way to conveniently combine them.
once federation is working again for kbin you’ll be able to participate in lemmy communities just fine. take a look over at fedia.io for how this works.
Still trying to wrap my head around all of this but this is looking promising!
Yep, I need a big man to explain that all to me. The interface is confusing. No app client. If anything, it all feels raw and uncoordinated
Kbin is still a very new project. If anything, Ernest has been doing a great job keeping up with the influx of Reddit users migrating over. Just be patient.
Someone also had a suggestion to change the name of Magazines to “Bins”, I think Bins would be incredibly catchy and on point.
Edit; Found the thread where it was suggested first:
https://kbin.social/m/linux@lemmy.ml/t/9828/uhhh-what-do-I-call-the-subreddits#entry-comment-42207
Credit to @HeartyBeast for coming up with it!
Bins is way better.
It is also easy for people to connect it with the federation.
When people talk about Subreddits they immediately know it is a community on Reddit.
You can easily see the same here. When people will talk about Bins, they can immediately identify it as an community on an Kbin instance.
I support this. magazines is a weird name that doesn’t really clarify wtf it is. a “bin” makes perfect sense though.
I like the concept, but bins just sounds like garbage bins to me- not as inviting as it might seem.
A bit of self-deprecating humor (or maybe self-awareness) never hurt anyone
It’s generally not great for everyone to congregate on the same instance, but I agree it does seem to be a pain point as it’s different than the ‘norm’ when it comes to social media. I think something that could help is instead of just listing all the instances and assuming the user understands how the fediverse works, maybe have like a short walkthrough that explains how it works and the pros and cons of signing up with the default server and then give other recommendations for which servers to join.
TLDR: I think funneling everyone into a default instance is a bad idea for the health of the platform but I do think a little how to guide on the sign up page could help lessen confusion
funneling everyone into a default instance is a bad idea for the health of the platform
not to mention the health of the server
I could barely log in yesterday
Too bad there don’t seem to be many other active kbin instances
If I wasn’t in so much debt I would have hosted one and given it a silly name like fuckb.in or somethin
This is like saying Mastodon is easy because you just sign up with mastodon.social.
That was always an option for people.
Kbin’s situation isn’t branding, it’s that it’s so young as a project that until a few days ago there wasn’t even functioning instructions for setting it up.
This is like saying Mastodon is easy because you just sign up with mastodon.social.
You laugh, but as a sorta-but-not-super-techie guy, that initially stopped me from joining Mastodon. It prompted me for an instance to sign up on, and that felt like a serious choice for which I was missing some info.
Same deal with Lemmy, really. At first glance, the implications of choosing an instance are not clear. And then you start reading and you realize that some instances ARE problematic even if you have access to the entire federated content from it.
It’s definitely a small but significant barrier to entry, and Kbin presents a front that feels easier to grasp when you’re not familiar with the concept of the Fediverse.
you realize that some instances ARE problematic even if you have access to the entire federated content from it.
Personally I needed reassurance that an instance at least appears to be committed into fighting hate speech, especially as a gay guy
and Kbin presents a front that feels easier to grasp when you’re not familiar with the concept of the Fediverse
As a similarly sorta-but-not-super-techie guy, I agree. Kbin nailed the presentation of the Fediverse by introducing a UI and experience that is remarkably similar to Reddit. For that reason alone I hope Kbin comes out as the most successful (or at least viable) alternative.
committed into fighting hate speech
The moment we approached the Fediverse, we heard about the creators of some of these places holding some extreme viewpoints, and we are hesitant about the type of people this may attract. Don’t know firsthand how true that may be, but we sure as hell don’t want to sign up to something that ends up becoming a sort of Voat.
The reassuring thing is that this exodus is completely different in nature than the one that ended up stampeding to and destroying Voat. The majority of damaged individuals who migrated back then… well… they already migrated back then, not now.
we sure as hell don’t want to sign up to something that ends up becoming a sort of Voat
I don’t care if a site has stuff that caters to a crowd with viewpoints that I don’t share, as long as they aren’t hassling me.
agree. You start thinking what if the one you randomly chose is the problematic one, what if they don’t follow best/good privacy/security practices, what if they are not an active collective/person and they forget updating their instance etc. Then you start thinking again: ok I’ll go to the “main”, default one, it must be a safe choice, you go there and you see that the main one has closed the registrations and you are still in the same position.
This was exactly my situation with mastodon. And guess what? I ended up joining a smaller instance that… closed down. So all my mastodon stuff is gone now despite mastodon still being a thing. it’s dumb.
i think there is a way to move your account from one instance to another, but even if there is a way, it wouldn’t cover the case that an instance is already offline. Yes, generally speaking it is nice and correct approach to “choose a smaller instance”, but when you don’t know who runs it behind, it is actually other problems that come up, as you already know first hand.
To be fair they handled the closing as well as anyone could do. they left it in read only for quite a while for people to download their stuff. they gave everyone notice. etc. but the point remains.
There is also Calckey if you haven’t tried it yet. It has a lots of useful features compared to mastodon. You can migrate everything to another instance very easily.
I agree. There is a lot to like here. The theming, intuitiveness, as well as it looks good on desktop and mobile and has a PWA. It also seems to be stabilizing. I hope this keeps up!
Indeed - the UX here is absolutely fantastic.
My only concern is so far I haven’t seen quite the same level of activity that I’ve seen on Lemmy, but I’m optimistic this could change, especially if some existing subreddits decide to start pointing users here…
Right now I’m exploring this and lemmy.world, my worry is that kbin seems disconnected from the other lemmy instances, whether that’s by design or not, I dunno.
I agree though, kbin has a FANTASTIC interface compared to most of the lemmy instances I’ve seen. If I had to pick one, I’d stick with kbin for now, but I hope this inspires good UI/UX development in lemmy where all the buzz is. The markdown implementation here is quite different from what I’m used to, but it’s nice that it’s there.
The only thing missing is a proper app. I haven’t tried the PWA yet, but that in itself is promising.
Thanks for the reassurance, but please take rests too! If there was a way to donate then please feel free to post it somewhere, I can see a lot of potential here.
