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Ernest Appreciation Post
(kbin.social)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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yes. ernest is the admin and host of kbin.social. however, if ernest abuses his power then people can easily spin up new instances of kbin (and have already done so) and you can simply use that instead. Or you can host your own instance. and all of the content is shared across them.
People keep saying that, but I can't find any good guides on how to do so.
that's because kbin is hardly a month old and still a wip. unfortunately that means to get something up is gonna be more technical.
There's someone on the issue tracker writing a guide. Let me dig up a link.
EDIT: It went into the main repository two weeks ago. Here's the PR for that initial commit:
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/409
It looks like the author of the guide -- who is not Ernest -- is maintaining a branch where they're writing said guide and that the last commits on that branch are only 11 hours old as of this writing and haven't yet been merged into the main kbin repo. Here's their WIP guide, about as fresh as you're gonna get admin docs for kbin:
https://codeberg.org/lilfade/kbin-core/src/branch/admin-guide/docs
The main repository's admin docs are here:
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/src/branch/develop/docs
@Aesthesiaphilia
Welp, that's way too advanced for me. And, I suspect, for most people. I'm going to stop suggesting "spin up a new instance" as a solution to fediverse problems.
Like, I'm sure you're about to say something like, "It's actually really easy! Just sjuehejsishebjfkoapwlheu jsjudhwnakalziziuw ksksoducyenwon znxjisiwnsbshoo nsjwisiakla. But also make sure you wjowownwnejdicinfnskso mwkslosidubnekskppppmamajsij jdjduhxbdnskoskwnmjcbdbw or else it will explode." Because that's what I'm going to hear. We don't know what "bare metal" or "docker" means, or what a "VPS" is.
It’s a work in progress about self-hosting an instance of a really new and fast-moving piece of software. I’ve no doubt things will get simpler.
I don't think that that really collides with @Otome's point, which is how much power Ernest has. She's saying that Ernest can't really do what spez is doing with Reddit. Spez controls Reddit in a way that Ernest cannot control kbin, or more-broadly, the Fediverse. Spez could simply deny access to Reddit to third party clients.
There are people who are going to be writing guides and packaging the software. There are a number of kbin instances that Ernest does not personally control, not to mention compatible software. The bar will continue to lower, but it is already low enough that if Ernest cannot "turn off" kbin if there are sufficient people who want to use it.
The overwhelming majority of people in the world cannot deploy or maintain an email server either, if you asked them to do so off-the-cuff. But there are many people running email servers around the world, and many people who can and would do so, were the need to arise. No one company "owns" email and can simply deny access to it because of that.
The point is that kbin and lemmy and such operate as email servers have, or Usenet servers, or IRC. The source code to servers is publicly-available and could be forked, if the need arises. Many different organizations run their own servers. And no one person can deny access to the system.
Right. so while the majority of users may struggle due to the technical nature, the reality is that currently there appears to be 75 different kbin instances. meaning if this (1) instance has problems, you can simply move to one of the other 74 instances and keep using kbin as normal. Even if ernest decided to 100% shut down kbin.social, those other instances still exist and he can't touch them.
Also, @Aesthesiaphilia, it looks like some provider just announced that they're providing managed kbin instances (like, they set it up, handle updates and such) starting at $10/month.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/131142/We-are-launching-KBIN-fully-managed-service
My guess is that there will be other providers.
That isn't necessary to achieve what Otome-chan is going for, but will probably bring down the bar for people who want to have full control over their site but don't want to deal with the technical side or want to only deal with a limited amount of it.
I agree, I was going on a bit of a tangent because people keep saying things like "you can just host your own instance".