So my understanding is that KBin.social is now gone from the internet for the indefinite future. Ernest, who meant well, simply could not keep up with the demands due to his personal life and the development issues that were cropping up all the time. Let me get ahead of any replies and say that it’s perfectly reasonable to shut down a large instance if it’s taking up your time and money or becoming a burden on your personal life. Personal health should always come before a bunch of random dudes/dudettes that happen to be on the internet. Additionally, it’s a good reminder that developing software while also maintaining a large instance probably isn’t a good idea and that you should probably make sure you’re taking a reasonable amount of work off your plate.

But I can’t help but feel like there’s another story here regarding the potential risks of the fediverse: Admins need to be ready to migrate ownership to others who are willing to take on the financial or user account management burden. Additionally, there should be a larger focus on community migration features for more flexibility to sudden instance losses.

I managed a community that had partially migrated to Kbin after the great reddit exodus last year and managed to continue to admin said community up until a few months ago when Kbin’s service became very very spotty. I understood Ernests’ particular dilemma so I was willing to give it a month or two to figure out what actions I needed to take to migrate the community again, but enough time has passed now that I am no longer confident that Kbin will return to even a read-only, moderator only state. This means that whatever community I had there is now completely out of my control and the users might not know why posts have stopped entirely. Basically, I have to start from the ground up which might be OK but I’m not particularly keen to start it all over right now.

So this is basically a plea to the admins out there: If you are having trouble with management and need to stop, could you please give the community a vocal heads up so that whatever subcommunity happens to form on your site has some means of migrating? Additionally, software out there should have more policies for community migration, whether that’s lemmy or mbin, as we never know when it might be necessary to migrate to a new domain under different ownership. Lastly, if there’s an option to give ownership to others in the community, please consider it as it would really help the fediverse if admins were willing to migrate domain and databases to other users who are willing to carry the torch.

That’s it from me for now, thanks for reading this minor rant. 🤙

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
    97·
    3 months ago

    kbin was the perfect storm of single developer and reddit migration. honestly, ernest could have saved everyone a lot of time and effort had they listened to the community 10 months ago when they were begging for more involvement.

    account portability is a big topic in 'verse developer circles. i think it is inevitable at some point, but its highly complex and will take some serious ActivityPub cooperation and standards. that we utilize addresses as names for both users and content is a big nut in the works.

    in the meantime, users should focus on community organized and operated instances. a shining example of this is beehaw.org

    also please dont forget this ecosystem is still in its infancy. the kinks, they are being worked on but its still the bleeding edge of social media tech, which can be painful.

      • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
        20·
        3 months ago

        the difference between community <-> user are less than youd think. the hurdles are nearly identical.

        moving user or community data from one domain/server to another is not hard. getting that change to propagate across fediverse and be functional is fucking hard.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        I think community portability is a way bigger deal, at least here

        Very true. And the aliases/mirrors idea might work well. Where content doesn’t have to be moved or the addressing problem fixed, instead people can just change their subscription and the mirror community have the ability to treat itself as the primary (and not a mirror). This feels viable to me!

  • Chozo@fedia.io
    66·
    3 months ago

    Kbin is dead. Long live Kbin.

    For those who enjoyed the Kbin experience, Fedia.io has been fantastic! It’s running Mbin, a fork of Ernest’s Kbin. It’s stable and online reliably!

    Hopefully Ernest is able to take care of himself. I’ve only ever had limited interactions with him, but he seems like a good guy, and I hope he’s able to get back to work on fulfilling his vision for the project.

    • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
      15·
      3 months ago

      Please have a look at the smaller mbin instances as well. It is not good to have one massive server and a lot of tiny ones. Kbin.social is the best example of it, the second best is lemmy.world which just has issues because of its size…

      • ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        My understanding is that mbin encourages microblogging to !random, which you can’t see from other instances. Is that incorrect? If that’s the case, I really don’t understand how mbin federation is supposed to work

        • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
          3·
          3 months ago

          The microblog side works the same as mastodon: following people. You cannot follow random from other instances, because it would creates way too much traffic on larger instances. Imho there should be no random magazine. It only exists for things that cannot be assigned a magazine, because it is not possible to post something without a magazine. We inherited that from kbin

          • ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            But on mastodon, there’s a feed that lets you view all posts from all federated instances. Wouldn’t mbin users be excluded from that feed when posting to !random?

            Edit: I was looking, and it seems to me that if a user posts to !random, I can’t even see it on their profile from mastodon? Am I misunderstanding this?

            • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
              3·
              3 months ago

              That is a very good point 🤔 I just checked the code. Your “subscribed” feed does include the users you follow as well, not just the magazines

              • ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                4·
                3 months ago

                Actually, it seems I was misunderstanding. Apparently all mastodon posts get federated as appearing on !random, so I’m not sure what I was seeing

                • BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de
                  2·
                  3 months ago

                  That is right. When you do not explicitly tag a magazine from mastodon (or a hashtag that is matched to a magazine) then the post ends up in the random mag

  • Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    3 months ago

    You’ve highlighted what is definitely a major problem with the Fediverse - all it takes for you to lose all the hard work you’ve done building up a community is the person running a server to pull the plug with no warning.

    I loved kbin social - I started out on there, and only moved over to lemmy because it was getting too erratic and it was impossible to find out what was going on. Being able to move is a great thing, but if you miss your window to move, you’re SOL.

    Admins definitely need to be willing and able to have the reins over to someone else if it’s getting to be too much, or to at least let people know in advance if they’re planning to shut down. Communication is key.

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      13·
      3 months ago

      all it takes for you to lose all the hard work you’ve done building up a community is the person running a server to pull the plug with no warning.

      This also shows the even more important lesson: if you want to maintain a community you also have to be responsible about digital community sovereignty. Set up your own instance, or at least set up your own webpage (even a Neocities one) that is kept updated with information about where the active community and any alternatives / mirrors are.

      We are coming out from reddit yet still have to fully learn the lesson about renting our existence on someone else’s server. (And, to be fair, fediverse development as a whole should be helping with that: in the least migrating user accounts should be as easy as “export to file” → “import from file”).

      • wjs018@ani.socialEnglish
        8·
        3 months ago

        This is an excellent point that I thought about when a previous community I was active in got shut down on the ml instance due to some admin whims. Since then, for the two communities I run, I have an external wiki that I maintain with things like complete rules or an index of past weekly discussion threads, etc. These wikis are set up on a VPS that I am responsible for, independent of the host instance of my communities.

        ani.social and the admin, @[email protected], has been excellent, and the instance is a logical place for anime/manga communities. I have also tried to keep up donations to keep the server running, but people’s lives change, not always by choice. Having some form of communication independent of the lemmy instance makes sense for those scenarios, if for nothing else except for communicating a migration to a different instance.

    • Elevator7009@kbin.run
      10·
      3 months ago

      Hey, I remember your name from kbin.social and I have not seen you in awhile, nice to see you’re still up and kicking on the Fediverse.

      I just lucked out. As soon as I figured out what I was doing I wanted off of the flagship instance to help with decentralization, went to kbin.cafe whose admin abandoned it so I went to kbin.run, and kbin.run happened to make the switch to Mbin.

  • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    3 months ago

    A shame about kbin. It’s where I landed as well but eventually had to move to lemmy.world.

    I wonder if there would be enough data on archive.org to rebuild your community? I guess not given users who moved might not have kepth the same usernames.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
          9·
          3 months ago

          Huh. That’s… recent. TIL @Melroy, a core maintainer (mbin has this governance system created specifically to avoid the kbin scenario from reoccuring, so there’s no true founder) of mbin, which has a great feature of integrating microblog into threads (kbin in fact had more features that still aren’t implemented here since there were a lot of reliability issues to fix), uses Mastodon instead. Anyways, like I said, the good thing about mbin is that you can straight up reply to a microblog post and ask.

          • Elevator7009@kbin.run
            3·
            3 months ago

            I have seen a few people with both Mbin and Mastodon accounts. From what I have seen so far, Mbin can post to Mastodon and see some Mastodon posts, but it is… rough. Link posts not sending the body out, for one. Making a Mastodon post from Mbin goes correctly without a title and displays like a microblog on Mbin and Mastodon, but on Lemmy it makes a whole new thread for that microblog with the first few words as title. Until Mbin integration with Mastodon improves (and Lemmy integration with Mastodon too, because Mbin federates out to Lemmy too) I can see getting yourself a separate Mastodon account to talk with the much higher number of people there as well.

            • debounced@kbin.run
              4·
              3 months ago

              if you can, please create an issue for this specific problem at https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/issues if one doesn’t already exist or thumbs-up/add a comment to an existing one so it gets visibility. broad fediverse compatibility is one of our main project goals, but not all platforms conform to the AP spec (or it’s not addressed by the spec) and instead do their own thing, so it sounds like we’ll need to work out a common ground.

              • Elevator7009@kbin.run
                3·
                3 months ago

                Part of what makes me nervous about issue creation is if I’ll get asked for examples of the issue, because I don’t want my GitHub linked back to my Fediverse account.

                I really should just go make another GitHub account so I can do this worry-free!

                • debounced@kbin.run
                  4·
                  3 months ago

                  ah, understandable. i’m a EE by day and all of the coding i contribute to Mbin is purely for fun with no bearing on real-life, so my github profile is expendable/only for Mbin. ;-)

        • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          Well that is certainly relevant news! And sad to see too.

          So long for the kbin family of platforms then (seriously, harsh to say, but so long as this is representative, I reckon that spells the end of it on the fediverse).

          • BeAware :fediverse:@social.beaware.live
            7·
            3 months ago

            @maegul @fediverse yeah…in interest of fairness, I did ask him for a comment on the situation before I went public with the information, but he completely ignored me so after 3 days I had to make a public statement on it.😔

            Me asking him: https://social.beaware.live/@BeAware/112914020692638023

            Me making it public: https://social.beaware.live/@BeAware/112922757724465742

            I can only do so much “investigating” before making it known.

            • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              Very much appreciate that you did this (and this follow up too)!!

              But lunduke is a fairly known entity by now I think. I recall many getting weird about him and his business-y linux persona shtick even before the transphobia stuff started. So while it’s completely fair to give Melroy a chance, providing a helping hand on mastodon almost just speaks for itself.

              And I’m not even saying that mbin necessarily should “die” because of this, just that it likely reflects an attitude that will not work well on the fedi over time, and probably justifiably so.

            • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
              2·
              3 months ago

              I did respond. And I revoked the request of lunduke after I discovered that he is transphobic. I’m part of the LGBT community myself. So I’m pro trans.

        • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
          1·
          3 months ago

          I revoked this after I indeed discovered more about Luneduke behavior. I’m actually gay myself!

          So I’m actually pro LGBT, including trans. After all I’m literally part of that community.

              • BeAware :fediverse:@social.beaware.live
                2·
                3 months ago

                @debounced Well, that’s great! However, that still doesn’t quell my concerns regarding Melroy’s offer to the transphobe. He IS the creator, though it is good ya’ll have a group, it still concerns me that someone so prominent with the project would associate themselves with such people.

                I have many trans friends and I cannot, in good conscience, recommend the project until it’s addressed.😬 😔

                @fediverse

                • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  Again. I revoked the request of lunduke after I discovered that he is transphobic.

                  In fact, I’m gay myself. So I’m part of the LGBT community including supporting trans people.

            • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
              1·
              3 months ago

              yeah I guess its like ernest created kbin and that is something but this guy forked it as part of a multiperson run project. I feel like it should be like technical creator or something.

      • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        I don’t think mbin existed at that time. For a long time I was on kbin on desktop and Artemis on Android. Artemis kinda evaporated, and eventually I settled on Voyager, which meant I needed a lemmy.world amount. I still used kbin on desktop but it became less and less reliable.

    • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      I wonder if there would be enough data on archive.org to rebuild your community?

      you can probably find a mirror of the community on one of the big Lemmy instances

  • readbeanicecream@lemm.eeEnglish
    23·
    3 months ago

    I started out on kbin.social. It really had a lot of potential…until it didn’t. Now, I spend my time on lemm.ee or kbin.earth (they migrated over to mbin). Account migration would have been great, and made things a lot easier, but you live and you learn. The fediverse is a new frontier for all of us. I wish Earnest the best!

  • aeharding@vger.socialEnglish
    19·
    3 months ago

    60 days notice is standard on Mastodon, it would be nice to see instances commit to that.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    3 months ago

    I just dropped Kbin from my bookmarks yesterday. I’m sad to see it gone, as it had some nice features.

  • Frozyre@kbin.melroy.org
    16·
    3 months ago

    We were seeing the warning signs already by the amount of bots and spammers who were taking over abandoned instances. They just posted a lot of garbage that filled up everywhere they went. And there was almost nobody there to deal with them. Ernest being out of action for prolonged periods didn’t help this.

    I really hated to see kbin social get mistreated this way considering it was my true alternative since Lemmy got mostly bombarded with former Reddit users that took that over and made it their own.

    Kbin social is a learning lesson that if you’re unable to maintain something due to personal problems, it is time to hand over the reigns. Ernest did do that but I’m not really sure if the person running it now knows what to do.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
    16·
    3 months ago

    But I can’t help but feel like there’s another story here regarding the potential risks of the fediverse:

    It’s perhaps the most important story going forward. Rexxit was only a year ago and a lot of instances are gone already. If that’s not sorted out people will start to wonder why they should invest time and effort in an instance or community.

    Admins need to be ready to migrate ownership to others who are willing to take on the financial or user account management burden.

    It was touch-and-go for us on feddit.uk but it all worked out right at the last minute and we’ve been working hard to ensure that everything is set up so that the instance’s future is assured for as long as the users want it. Here is our most recent financial report.

    A lot of problems could be avoided by planning ahead - never rely on a single Admin and make sure that funding is in place (and not being run from any one individual’s bank account - why Open Collective is very good for this). That way, if one Admin has to step down (and you are less likely to burn out if you can spread the load) then there are already others who can pick up the slack.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    15·
    3 months ago

    The idea of migration and data preservation has been a topic since day one, since that’s a big reason why so many moved to the Fediverse. I still haven’t seen a perfect solution, and maybe there isn’t one. Perhaps just having a lot of redundancy (oh no, reposts!) is the only true way of protecting posts for as long as possible, and even then…

    Ernest started things rolling with something that probably wasn’t ready for the demand, but it was there when the time came. That others forked off from it and kept it going is the bright spot here. I appreciate Lemmy and even have an account from the first days, but I like the kbin/mbin setup better so that’s where I sit.

  • Hello_there@fedia.io
    12·
    3 months ago

    Also a good lesson to give up control to others. I and others volunteered to help with the spam problem - in direct messages to him - that went unanswered.
    If people offering help and you might be overwhelmed, accept it.

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
    11·
    3 months ago

    I sorta wish the strengths of the fediverse could be utilized by having some redundancy. Im not saying every instance should replicate everything but it would be great if you could make an account for two or three instance and then get some secret to copy and paste into each other to link them up. Maybe even allow a max of 3 for syncing.

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    11·
    3 months ago

    At the moment of writing this there are 90 comments, none of them even considering the idea that this whole Fediverse thing is never going to be a worthy contender for a healthier Internet if we keep treating it as some hippie, amateur, “community is all you need” project.

    “You get what you pay for” is still true. If the thousands of people using kbin contributed with $10/year, you can bet that the developer wouldn’t be in this situation.

    We might come up with all the schemes to try to mitigate the issues and warts of federated software, but it would help a lot more if most people understood that software developers and instance admins are still professionals who still have ambitions and would like to be paid for their work accordingly.

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Mastodon is not any better. Plenty of stories of instances that disappeared, admins made amateur mistakes and lost databases, moderators burn out and leave everything…

        Even the “successful” donation-based instances make enough money to cover only the costs of hosting and the admins and moderators are expected to do all the grunt work out of “love for their community”. It’s simply not sustainable, and it will become even less so with all the upcoming regulations and controls around social media.

        Zuckerberg will use and abuse of regulatory capture to make it impossible to run an instance without significant costs. If we don’t “suit up” and professionalize the Fediverse quickly, we will have no other choice but to put all social media infrastructure on his hands.