[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

(Continued from parent due to post length constraints.)

You say we should move off-site. There's already a large general-purpose forum for Disney: MiceChat. It's a classic non-federated forum, from a bygone age of the internet. People who aren't attached to a Reddit-like interface typically are on MiceChat, or one of the thousands of Disney Facebook groups. They're the largest Disney community on the internet.

We discussed running our own Disney-themed Kbin instance (like /r/StarTrek and /r/Android both did), that would be a federated competitor to MiceChat. The idea still appeals to me. But the fact of the matter is that we didn't have the time nor money to be admins. I have a full-time job where I can't be spending time working as an admin all day (and - fun fact - I actually did work for Disney, formerly), and I don't have the legal know-how to host a website.

Making a community on someone else's instance doesn't have those same issues. kbin.social has a sane admin team and is permissive with federation, giving the magazine a large reach (but keeping out hate speech and trolls). There are people on here who want to participate in their hobbies - like going to Disneyland, which for many is a hobby - or who want to use the community as a resource (and the Disneyland subreddit was a resource, too).

Because at the end of the day - it is a lot of work, but seeing a thriving community is rewarding. You grow attached to it. It's why people play simulation games; you help shepard people along, make people happy, and watch the line go up. It's not "ego" any more than playing a city builder game is "ego". I certainly never threw my weight around on Reddit; our subreddit was positively tiny compared to others. The only time I used my green badge on Reddit was to give people warnings or make community-wide announcements. The only time I mentioned I was a mod elsewhere was when I needed a "fun fact" to introduce myself with at work/school or when it's directly relevant (like letting people on the fediverse know that the magazine here is run by the same team that ran it on Reddit).

The Disneyland subreddit was a good community, IMO. The whole mod team did a lot of work to keep it good, and I was proud to help out. Connecting people with the resources they need and letting them show off the things that made them excited, while keeping the spambots and trolls at bay and redirecting lost folks to the right spot. It's something you need to experience to understand.

One thing that was missing was Disney's direct involvement. Disney never contacted us. Even when I worked for them - corporate knew I was a mod there but left us alone since it was considered my personal business (my only restriction was that I couldn't say I was speaking officially on behalf of the company). As long as the sidebar said that we were fan-run, Disney never said a peep. Because Disney didn't have any official presence on Reddit, folks would frequently repost news shared by Disney to the subreddit directly.

Threads gives us a unique opportunity to be able to connect folks to official Disney social media right here on Kbin. They'd be able to interact 2-way without needing to make a Threads account themselves (and without Disney needing to come here officially). It's really the best thing that could happen for that type of community, and it would be a shame to lose out on it.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

And I am saying we should maintain the status quo. Rather than trying to persuade, you should go somewhere that already guarantees you get what you want.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's a point for you, then:

Why must you force your beliefs onto communities with tens of thousands of people, many of whom don't agree with you? The status quo is that kbin.social federates with basically everywhere, as it should since it's a general-purpose flagship instance. Why do you want to change the status quo because of your personal beliefs?

Instead of trying to force Kbin.social to change, maybe you should host your own instance where you can block Meta and everywhere that federates with it. Or you can join a Kbin instance that already does so: https://kglitch.social/

But there should still be places that allow for federation if that's what they desire. That's how Kbin.social is currently set up. I am defending the current status quo, and you are trying to argue for changing it. There are instances that already agree with you; you don't need to stay here and fight everyone who disagrees.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

People from Threads will largely be in the "Microblog" tab, which Lemmy doesn't have. The only people in the comments section will be people who purposely choose to follow Kbin communities.

It still isn't a good enough reason to take away that interaction from tens of thousands here on Kbin, though.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

How many times must I say that I disagree with Facebook on a moral level? How does that make me a "shill"??

My point is largely:

  • The fedipact is self-defeating. Nobody has refuted this point, they all seem to ignore it to focus on personal attacks. It won't stop EEE; it will simply divide the fediverse and make it a worse place when it's still new and fragile.

  • This is a general-purpose instance. As such, it shouldn't sign the fedipact or defederate from Threads. If you're running a niche instance - that's fine, you can sign if it's important to you and you wish to stay niche. But a loud minority shouldn't speak for the entirety of one of the largest fediverse instances out there (which is what kbin.social is).

  • People may have legitimate reason to communicate with people on Threads, and because they may disagree with Facebook on a moral level (like me), you shouldn't force them into Zuck's slimy fingers. I'm not going to use the service if I have to go through Zuck's gateway to do so. There's an opportunity to use FOSS stuff and stay away from Zuck, but people who ostensibly agree that Zuck is bad are telling me I can't do that? For reasons they can't even vocalize. So me not wanting to join Threads makes me a corporate shill, somehow. Okay.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

That's not what I'm saying. You are putting words in my mouth and then refusing to have a conversation. But I get the same feeling that we're going to keep talking past each other.

It doesn't matter because you likely won't read this. But I'm not saying you should go elsewhere - I am simply asking why you chose here and not a place that focuses on discussion, like Tildes. I am not telling you to "go away"; I'm merely pointing out that there must be more to your decision and it can't all be because you want serious discussions, since this place isn't suited for that as well as others are.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

This thread is specific to Kbin, which is why I mention it.

Lemmy doesn't integrate well with the rest of the fediverse at all, period. It's one of the many reasons why I left.

Threads users won't be able to make articles here on Kbin anyway (IIRC); they'd make microblogs. So blocking them would effectively remove them from your microblogs, and if they reply to anything in here I don't think you'll see that either.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

To an extent, but morality is important to me too.

I don't use Facebook because they corrupt democracy. I don't use Twitter because Elon Musk is a wannabe fascist. I don't use Reddit because they have refused to clamp down on bad actors and have directly insulted their users.

If everyone defederates from Threads, I won't use Threads, because I don't use Facebook. My morals are more important to me than audience size.

But... as things stand, once Threads federates with the wider world, I will be able to interact with my friends without letting Zuck near me. In a most ideal world, they'd be able to follow me here on Kbin and I can follow them back. I'd see their posts in the Microblog feed and sorted into magazines, and I can like and comment and boost without logging into Zuck's website and letting him have my data again.

You can say that's supporting Facebook. Maybe. But if Threads is truly federated, then Facebook would basically be able to go anywhere regardless; in that sense I'd be supporting Threads whether I was talking to someone directly or not.

And in that sense, I totally see why people say "we shouldn't federate with Meta, they're evil and they're selfish and they're going to destroy the fediverse." I can understand why people personally would want to choose somewhere that doesn't do that. I don't think this instance should block Meta because it's large and general-purpose, but somewhere like Beehaw where that sort of thing is part of the mission statement... I get it.

But from my perspective, I am given the chance to talk to a large group of people; people who share the same interests as me; people I know in real life. People who would see my stuff - but (more importantly) I'd also see theirs. And I'm sure most people feel the same way; they're going to where the people are. This'll naturally create an audience, one that gives a wide variety of fresh content and also responds to content you give.

I'd much rather have that then return to 2020-era Mastodon where you'd be lucky to get 3 interactions to a Toot, and you'd see everything there is to see in 15 minutes (at most).

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Then why does Threads advertise ActivityPub support during its onboarding if it's not going to go for ActivityPub?

Can you cite your sources where Meta is forcing people to sign a legal agreement to federate, or are you just going from your gut?

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

do you know how FB or instagram work? Do you think that when you post, your post reaches your whole audience?

Of course not. But it doesn't on Mastodon either. Or Kbin. Or even Lemmy.

If someone is on vacation when I make my post on Mastodon, there is a good chance they will never see it. The post isn't going to be recommended to them - the feed is chronological. They would have to specifically search me out and scroll way back to see my posts.

If my post doesn't make it to "Hot" on Kbin or Lemmy, by default it dies. The only ones who will see it are those sorting by "New". That's a fraction of the complete audience. That's just how algorithms work.

Facebook and Twitter have their own recommendation algorithm of some kind. Threads does too, from what I've seen of it. While I wouldn't expect my stuff to go viral, frankly my friends are more likely to care and react to a post I make there. I don't use Facebook anymore, but I had plenty of interactions when I did use it. You will never reach your entire audience unless your entire audience reaches out for you - but on average the people I know are more likely to care about me than some strangers on my Mastodon instance. So I'd rather post where they can see it.

So, you've read the history of XMPP. Did you understand what google practically did?

Yes, that was... like, my entire point. Everything you just described will happen with or without the fedipact. If Meta has plans to go through with EEE, they will do it no matter what. Even if everyone defederated from them, they'd still build on ActivityPub in weird ways and break the protocol over time.

But we know that not everywhere will defederate with them. So what will happen is you're going to have a splinter group defederated anywhere that federates with Meta (or federates with somewhere that federates with Meta) and you're going to have... well, everyone else.

People are going to leave and go to the side that federates with Meta, because that's where the network effect is strongest. Again, I don't care that someone on my Mastodon instance got married. I mean, congratulations, I guess... but if my childhood best friend is getting married, I'm more invested. I don't want to use Meta's stuff if I have another option; after all, I did quit Instagram and Facebook cold turkey. But I would jump at the ability to have those moments while still keeping Zuck off my computer.

So, like I said, this is going to lead to 2 fediverses. One that federates with Meta, and one that doesn't. And "normal" non-techie people are going to want to go to where they get the most eyeballs on their stuff - that means somewhere that federates with Meta.

Meta could still start extending and extinguishing. But they could do that anyway. That is a completely separate subject from the fedipact as designed. I agree that it's a problem, but the fedipact being executed will only speed up the process, bisecting the entire project and turning it back into a niche thing for nerds. You know, like XMPP or IRC.

Staying away from meta is a decision in the basis of protecting the whole project.

Staying away from Meta literally has zero impact on what Meta does. Meta will do whatever.

The choice is if Mastodon tries to adapt to be compatible or not. Breaking ActivityPub for compatibility with Meta is a losing proposition, and one that we shouldn't even start. But that's the fight we should be having; holding firm if/when Meta stops holding to the standard.

The fedipact is self-defeating and won't stop Meta from being Meta. The only thing the fedipact will do is ruin the fediverse writ large. The true way to preventing an XMPP situation is by having maintainers hold firm and act just as they did before Meta joined; no feature creep, no goalpost moving. Break EEE at "extend", not "embrace".

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

AutoMod handles most of it. We just go through the queue and manually approve stuff.

However, the app doesn't have the queue IIRC. So people will be waiting a long time for their posts to be approved. It'll slow down the sub considerably since I can really only mod from desktop.

[-] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Up top, if you hit "Magazines" it gives you a list of magazines on Kbin, sorted by subscriber count. You can find recreations of common Reddit communities here. There's also a search function to look for a particular magazine. These are the ones you mentioned:


As for other suggestions, I'm a bit biased. I moderated /r/Disneyland on Reddit, and I've recreated it here on Kbin alongside some of the original mod team: @Disneyland (mobile link). I didn't moderate /r/modeltrains... but I saw there wasn't any model train communities on here, so I decided to create @modeltrains (mobile link).

As far as things I don't moderate, here's a bunch of cool communities I've found here on Kbin. Note that Kbin magazines are case-sensitive (something I'd wish they'd change):


If you see something in here you like but there's no content in it - content comes from users like you!

Be the change you wish to see. Contribute something - anything - to get the community going. If everyone pitches in soon enough communities will start thriving.

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EnglishMobster

joined 1 year ago