Hello!
I work as a AAA game programmer. I previously worked on the Battlefield series.
Before I worked in the AAA space, I worked at Disneyland as a Jungle Cruise skipper!
As a hobby, I have an N-Scale (1:160) model train layout.
This is sort of the mission statement of Kbin. Kbin supports Lemmy, Mastodon, FireFish, and Pixelfed already. It’s planned to support PeerTube (this used to work but broke) and Mobilizon.
That’s the main reason why I have a Kbin account. :)
There’s still a lot of people who will always stick to Reddit as well (as evidenced by a good amount of hostility in the comment section of the Reddit discussion on /r/rust).
Yet another reason why I prefer Kbin.
The developers of Lemmy have been questionable for some time. See their post announcing Lemmy: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
Hey all, longtime Marxist-leninist, recorder of left audiobooks, and megathread shitposter here.
Posting this in light of a recent one week Reddit ban I earned for shitting on US police, as I’m sure many of us have gotten in recent weeks.
So I’ve spent the past few months working on a self hostable, federated, Reddit alternative called Lemmy, and it’s pretty much ready to go. Unlike here we’d have ultimate control over all content, and would never have to self censor.
Obviously as communists, we agitate where the people are, so we should never abandon Reddit entirely, but it’s been clear to all of us from day one, that communities like this stand on unsteady ground, and could be banned or quarantined at any moment by the white supremacist Reddit admins. This would be both a backup and a potentially better alternative. Moderation abilities are there, as well as a slur filter.
Raddle isn’t an option obviously since it’s run by this arch anti tankie scum, ziq.
I wanted to ask ppl here if they’d like me to host an instance, and mod all the current mods here.
The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. This was their first post announcing Lemmy as a real thing you could go use. (It’s also why a good chunk of the Threadiverse is absolutely infested with tankies.)
I never agitated for a fork because generally the Lemmy devs do an okay job at keeping their politics separate from their software. But the more I look at their attitudes and (frankly) the hazing they do towards contributors, the more I’m thinking that it may be better to push for an outright fork of Lemmy, give it a better name, a saner dev team, and excise the original devs entirely. Even if we ignore their politics (which is hard to do, but can be done), they’ve simply not been the best stewards of the project - it’s succeeded in spite of them, not because of them.
That said, I think Lemmy as a piece of software is generally okay. Kbin has more long-term promise, I feel, but Kbin has its own issues and is much rougher around the edges. A lot of the issues Kbin has have already been sorted out by Lemmy, so I think it might be best to make a Lemmy fork and bring in features from Kbin into it (alongside performance fixes and whatnot that the Lemmy devs refuse to action on).
If you follow a Kbin community on Mastodon, the top-level post is the only thing shared to the community’s “profile”. If you click on the post, then the comments section is the Kbin comments section.
Here’s an example of a Kbin post I made displaying on Mastodon. I replied to this post, and my reply shows up as a reply to the top-level post.
Kbin’s federation with Mastodon works as you’d expect it to work.
I don’t know why Lemmy insists on such bad integration with Mastodon. Last I checked, the Lemmy devs were insisting on not having smooth integration with Mastodon.
Doesnt make much sense when you can create a second account on Mastodon or one of many other platforms which already implement user following much better.
It’s one reason why I jumped to Kbin and have been using it for the past few months. Kbin does indeed support user following much better -and it supports threads showing up in Mastodon much better too.
Have you ever moderated somewhere of any significant size?
I was once a mod on a 500k+ user subreddit on Reddit. Without AutoMod, the place would go to shit within a month. AutoMod caught so many things that would otherwise disrupt the community.
It’s not “authoritarian” to automatically remove posts of people spamming the N-word, especially when you can easily tell the users are trolls. Nor is it “authoritarian” to remove spammers trying to shill their T-shirts or sending links to scam websites. Or those annoying bots that would copy user comments and then try to pose as “real” users so they could build up karma and get around spam filters easier.
At a certain point, it is impossible to keep up with everything happening in your community. While reports are important, mods do have to sleep. We do have lives, and we don’t pay attention to the communities we help run for every waking moment of our days.
If I wanted to ban every person who used the letter “e”, I could do that without a bot. A modbot makes it easier, but simply having a tool available doesn’t make the person using that tool more or less authoritarian. Not to mention both Kbin and Lemmy have open moderation logs, so you can easily see if a place has a moderation style you disagree with.
I think it’s more realistic than people think. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is likely why Threads is ActivityPub, and Reddit is (potentially) affected by it too: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
Let me quickly quote selected sections of the act itself:
The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation.
Simply:
You need to allow third-party apps free of charge
You must publish your API publicly
Failure to comply causes:
Initial fine of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover (or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements)
Daily fine of up to 5% of the average daily turnover
Systemic infringements can cause the EU to break up the company entirely
The law has teeth. It could be I’m misunderstanding some nuances of the text, but this part seems pretty cut and dry from my perspective (I am not a legal expert):
gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_communication
Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people.
If deemed an internet gatekeeper, Reddit would need to allow interoperability free of charge with all of their “interpersonal communications services” (e.g. Reddit + chat + modmail + etc.) on any kind of third-party app that wants to support it. (Which makes recent decisions even more baffling.)
From a cynical perspective, Reddit switching to ActivityPub would also work to remove a barrier between Reddit and Lemmy. If Reddit thinks they can out-compete Lemmy from a UX perspective, reversing course and going more open by embracing ActivityPub would bring traffic back to where they can monetize it. If Reddit’s UX is better, people will be more likely to engage on Reddit than Lemmy, and thus Reddit wouldn’t lose people.
Of course, there are 2 major issues with this:
Reddit is terrible at UX and is actively getting worse
Spez is a fuckwad who wants to be Elon without realizing he and Elon are about to be royally fucked by the EU next year when this starts to really take effect
Yes. Here are the timelines:
The DMA started applying as of beginning of May 2023. Within two months, companies providing core platform services have to notify the Commission and provide all relevant information. The Commission will then have 45 working days to adopt a decision designating a specific gatekeeper. Designated gatekeepers will have six months after the Commission decision to ensure compliance with the obligations foreseen in the DMA.
So we should start hearing things in about 2-3 months, with compliance in 8-9 months.
Relevant sections:
The ability of end users to acquire content, subscriptions, features or other items outside the core platform services of the gatekeeper should not be undermined or restricted. In particular, a situation should be avoided whereby gatekeepers restrict end users from access to, and use of, such services via a software application running on their core platform service. For example, subscribers to online content purchased outside a software application, software application store or virtual assistant should not be prevented from accessing such online content on a software application on the core platform service of the gatekeeper simply because it was purchased outside such software application, software application store or virtual assistant.
Gatekeepers can hamper the ability of end users to access online content and services, including software applications. Therefore, rules should be established to ensure that the rights of end users to access an open internet are not compromised by the conduct of gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can also technically limit the ability of end users to effectively switch between different undertakings providing internet access service, in particular through their control over hardware or operating systems. This distorts the level playing field for internet access services and ultimately harms end users. It should therefore be ensured that gatekeepers do not unduly restrict end users in choosing the undertaking providing their internet access service.
The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation.
In all cases, the gatekeeper and the requesting provider should ensure that interoperability does not undermine a high level of security and data protection in line with their obligations laid down in this Regulation and applicable Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC. The obligation related to interoperability should be without prejudice to the information and choices to be made available to end users of the number-independent interpersonal communication services of the gatekeeper and the requesting provider under this Regulation and other Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679.
Pretty clear legislation - no lock-in, don’t block access to content, you must publish your API for others to use. Very good legislation.
“I know exactly what React is, I prefer to use Vue” shows you literally have zero clue what React is.
You don’t choose when you visit a website. There’s no option that says “render this with Vue.” It’s handled by the website itself. Lemmy uses Inferno instead of React, for example. You didn’t make that choice, and I highly doubt you chose Lemmy because researched that beforehand. And if you did, by going to Lemmy’s GitHub page… surprise! GitHub uses React!
I think you need to take a history lesson on the web. I gave multiple examples of tech Facebook has backed, and yet EEE hasn’t happened to any of them. There are more open techs that Facebook has contributed code to; a lot of Apache projects, for example. And yet no EEE. Curious. Also I noticed you’re avoiding the “EU will come down on Facebook if they get out of line” side of my argument. Also curious.
But I suppose that’s not a surprise. It’s clear you have no idea how things even work; you probably googled (oh, wait, you probably don’t use Google) “React replacement” to find Vue at all. You probably didn’t know Vue was created by a Google engineer and Google uses it internally. I suggest you change what web framework you use, if you have that magic button tucked away. Maybe switch to Inferno?
Not to mention you say you never used the Reddit app. I never said anything about the Reddit app. I was talking about the Reddit website. Unless you’ve never used the Reddit website, either? I trust you’re going to say you’ve never owned anything but a flip phone and do web searches with a phone book next.
You conclude by making a strawman and putting words in my mouth that I never said. You think if I loved corporations I would be here? But you’ve made multiple factual inaccuracies, you never source anything you say, you just constantly pout like the world is ending and try to force everyone else to do things your way.
But you’re right. We do have different viewpoints. I suggest you stop spreading yours as factual, or use that phone book to find sources.
(And for the record, I despise Elon.)
Are you really saying you don’t use PayPal? I presume you have a job; your job probably uses Slack (or Teams) at the corporate level. You’re never streamed anything? You’re not coming from Reddit? You don’t use Wikipedia? Or Spotify? Or reCAPTCHA?
I most sincerely doubt that you’ve never used any of those, all of which run on tech that Facebook built and helps maintain. And I’m not even mentioning the countless small places that use things like React. I’m not joking when I say you literally cannot use the modern web without bumping into a website running React, which was - again - created by Facebook.
Maybe you think the things I mentioned are “apps” - they’re not, to be clear. They’re frameworks. You generally have no idea you’re using them, because it’s something that gets setup by the folks building the website. You don’t directly download React.js; you go to Discord.gg and Discord will download React to your machine and run it to display Discord. Same thing with Wikipedia - you go to Wikipedia, it uses HHVM to show you the page you want.
If you knew all that already and still think you don’t use tech run by Facebook, then your ignorance of how the web works is shocking.
I also think you’re struggling with the concept of “Meta doesn’t want the EU to come down on them.” They will never extend the network in a way that breaks apps, and they can’t extinguish it because both of those would make them “gatekeepers” under EU law - the thing they’re trying to avoid.
You have to understand that - as much as I dislike capitalism - it is what drives consumers. Linux is the better OS than Windows. That’s proven by basically everything running Linux… except consumer PCs, which are usually Macs or Windows. Because Linux doesn’t advertise itself like they do, not really.
The way for the fediverse to grow is to get corporations to embrace it. The more corporations that embrace it, the less likely it is that any individual corpo can extend/extinguish (assuming they ignore the EU for some reason). Corporations means regular users, and regular users means normalization, which means a healthy and growing fediverse.
Rather than trying to get a big place to reject this at all cost, maybe you should move to a small place like Beehaw that will more readily accept your worldview.
I think you need to open your eyes as to the real reason why Threads exists. Instead of baseless claims, let’s use a source, shall we?
It’s obvious why Facebook would want to make a Twitter clone. But the Digital Markets Act is likely why that clone uses ActivityPub: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn’t considered a “gatekeeper platform”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn’t currently connected to the wider fediverse, that’s probably why they’re not in the EU yet - because it’s currently in violation of the Digital Markets Act.
This also means that fears of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” are likely overblown and FUD. Breaking ActivityPub interoperability means that they’d be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers.
I’m not saying Facebook is innocent. But I think people are so paranoid about things like EEE when there is clear evidence that EEE is not in Facebook’s best interest.
We want the fediverse to be a “normal” thing. Heck, we should get as many corporations as possible onboard, because then fears of EEE go out the window entirely. That’s how other protocols like Matter work - a bunch of corporations work with an open entity to decide collectively how the protocol should work.
And, if you pay attention, the web - and specifically Facebook - has been using open protocols like those for years without issue. Many of these open protocols the web uses were made by Facebook. Some examples:
React is a JavaScript library that was created by Facebook.
It makes webpages pretty, basically. It makes things load really really fast while still looking clean and modern.
Dropbox, Paypal, Discord, Slack, Netflix, AirBnB all use React.
HHVM was created by Facebook.
HHVM is what executes the Hack programming language (also made by Facebook). Hack is based on PHP (the same thing Kbin runs on), but is optimized in a different way and is more flexible than traditional PHP.
Slack and Wikipedia are the biggest users of HHVM.
Cassandra was created by Facebook.
Cassandra works basically as an alternative to MySQL. It does much of the same job, but works a bit better making sure there’s no single point of failure.
Uber, Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, and Twitter all use Cassandra.
Thrift was created by Facebook.
It connects programs that were created using different programming languages. They can all share a data format through Thrift, which lets them talk to each other.
Thrift is used by Netflix, Evernote, Twitter, Uber, and reCAPTCHA.
Literally you could not use the modern web without using these technologies. I’m leaving 5-6 more out for space constraints. Meta has a loud voice in most of those techs, and outright controls a handful of them. That’s been the case for most of the 2010s into the 2020s.
I wouldn’t say I trust Facebook with the fediverse. But I’m also not so quick to jump to EEE because they do have a fairly solid track record when it comes to web tech.
And I don’t think “this isn’t a place for normies, normies go home!!!” is a winning proposition to make sure the fediverse becomes big enough that EEE isn’t an issue. We want widespread adoption. Smaller instances will always exist, and if that’s what you want you should join an explicitly small instance like Beehaw. Let the bigger instances federate and be federated with. Stop spreading baseless FUD.
Yes, and that’s likely why Threads uses ActivityPub to begin with. See the EU’s Digital Markets Act: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn’t considered a “gatekeeper platform”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn’t currently connected to the wider fediverse, that’s probably why they’re not in the EU yet.
This also means that fears of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” are likely overblown. Breaking fediverse interoperability means that they’d be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers. The whole reason why Facebook is making Threads ActivityPub is so they don’t get hit by EU rules about being gatekeepers of content.
This means your normal fediverse apps (e.g. Fedilab) would be able to work with Threads natively, without any need for “read-only” instances like you say.
They participate because the Digital Markets Act is forcing them to: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. The Fediverse gives a way for Meta to be in compliance, and they have an interest in maintaining competition.
It’s written in PHP, which a lot of devs dislike.
It is drowning in pull requests: 83 open as of right now. https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls
Ernest (the lead dev) wasn’t really expecting it to blow up yet. Kbin was created in January of this year, and the first “major” instance was launched in May. It blew up basically instantly due to Reddit imploding, and Ernest has been playing catch-up.
But it still has rough edges - no API means no mobile apps. Lots of bugs and such from being a new project. It’s improving every week (including an API in code review), but Lemmy is more polished and has an relatively mature API.
You can see a list of instances here: https://fedidb.org/software/kbin
As far as I know, there isn’t specifically a privacy-focused instance like what Lemmy has. But I also didn’t browse that list of instances too closely.