I forced myself to go back a little to Reddit recently. Because while I endorse and love the existence of the Fediverse, I can't in good conscience, tolerate the instability of it. Any other time I go somewhere, I'm met with a page that says KBin is working on resolving issues, then I go somewhere else and it's fine....
This isn't "the fediverse." This is one instance. "The fediverse" is a network of interoperable instances, each one owned and maintained separately.
Personally, I think the best way to interact with the fediverse is to maintain accounts on multiple instances. I have a dozen or so accounts total, and regularly use four or five of them. They're all under the same name, so they're all "me," but they're spread out instead of everything being on one account on one instance.
The main reason I prefer that is that every instance is different. Even though they're all interacting with the same broad pool of content, they each have a different userbase with different preferences, which means that they each have a different set of federated instances and subscribed communities. There's a fair amount of stuff I'll see on one instance but not on another, and it follows the overall focus of the instance. So whatever my mood might be or I might be interested in, I have an account on a suitable instance to match it.
Another advantage though, and directly on topic, is that I always have an alternative if one of them is having problems. Since each instance is privately owned and maintained rather than being owned by a corporation and maintained by its staff, there's any number of quirks and difficulties and failures. And that's just the way it is - the people running these instances are just ordinary people who are basically donating their time and resources, and they don't owe us anything. We get whatever we get, and have no right to demand any more than that.
With accounts on multiple instances, it doesn't matter if one or another of them has difficulties at the moment, or even if one shuts down completely (as two of my favorites have), since i can just switch to a different instance any time.
Kbin is special. It's an entirely different piece of software from Lemmy (and a better one in many ways). But it was written primarily by one person - Ernest - and he's also the owner of this instance. And while he's a great guy, he's also a single individual with other interests and responsibilities, and with some health issues. So it's a great place running on a great piece of software, but it has some difficulties and is often slow and/or glitchy. That's fine - I still like it here, so it's one of my most-used accounts, and I can always use a different one on a different instance if this one is too much of a problem.
First, I think Ernest has done a fantastic job and I've been rooting for him this whole time. But it's becoming clear it's all too much for him without the support of a larger team....
I'm pretty much always aware that we're governed by what really amounts to a self-reinforcing network of amoral psychopaths, but there are still times when that fact is driven home especially forcefully.
Of course it's Crowder at the forefront of this - the narcissistic manchild who was caught on-camera being such a vile piece of shit to his eight-month-pregnant then-wife that even his biggest simps couldn't pretend that it was defensible.
New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley are introducing bipartisan legislation that would prevent members of the executive and legislative branches — as well as their spouses and children — from trading individual company stocks.
The "All" that's displayed on a given instance is all of the threads from that instance and from communities on federated instances to which someone from that instance has subscribed.
Roughly:
Imagine a brand new instance. For simplicity's sake, we'll imagine that it has no communities of its own, so the only content it can ever have is from other instances.
By default, it's federated with everyone, but it's not going to actually get anything from any of those other instances. It'll just remain that way - federated but empty - until somebody from that instance subscribes to a community on another instance.
At that point, a mirror for that community will be created on the new instance. And from then on, that mirror will... well... mirror the threads and posts on the other instance.
But that's it. At that point, the new instance has just gone from having no content to having content from one community on one other instance. And it'll stay that way until someone subscribes to a second community, and then a third, and so on.
So again, "All" isn't everything on the fediverse. It's everything for which that specific instance has a mirror, which is everything the users of that instance have subscribed to.
So already to some degree, and undoubtedly more over time, instances are going to come to have a specific feel, as, for example, users on a tech-oriented instance subscribe to every tech community out there and not much of anything else, and so on.
I discovered yesterday evening that Lemmy.ml is blocking all inbound ActivityPub requests from /kbin instances. Specifically, a 403 'access denied' is returned when the user agent contains "kbinBot" anywhere in the string. This has been causing a cascade of failures with federation for many server owners, flooding the message...
Presuming for the sake of argument that it's a deliberate move by .ml to freeze out kbin users, it only really goes against the idea of the fediverse in that it's an underhanded way to accomplish something that was meant to be done openly. By design, every instance is entirely free to choose whether or not to federate with any other.
What a disappointing turn of events. Kbin is now my primary.
And (again presuming for the sake of argument that it's not simply a glitch), that's the fediverse working exactly as intended. Just as every instance is free to choose which instances to federate with, every user is free to choose which instances to join or follow.
Can KBin not like, freak out at any turn when surfing on it? ( kbin.social )
I forced myself to go back a little to Reddit recently. Because while I endorse and love the existence of the Fediverse, I can't in good conscience, tolerate the instability of it. Any other time I go somewhere, I'm met with a page that says KBin is working on resolving issues, then I go somewhere else and it's fine....
Unmoderated and now extremely delayed federation - is it time to move? ( kbin.social )
First, I think Ernest has done a fantastic job and I've been rooting for him this whole time. But it's becoming clear it's all too much for him without the support of a larger team....
US thinktank linked to billionaires behind supreme court wealth tax case lobbying ( www.theguardian.com )
(The subtitle and first few paragraphs follow.)...
The Next Front in the GOP's War on Women: No-Fault Divorce ( www.rollingstone.com )
Senators introduce bipartisan ban on stock ownership for executive and legislative branch office holders and their families | CNN Politics ( edition.cnn.com )
New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley are introducing bipartisan legislation that would prevent members of the executive and legislative branches — as well as their spouses and children — from trading individual company stocks.
Why is the all page so different from instance to instance
For example I’m seeing a solarpunk post as #2 on sh.itjust.works but not on any other instance....
Lemmy.ml is blocking all requests from /kbin Instances ( kbin.social )
I discovered yesterday evening that Lemmy.ml is blocking all inbound ActivityPub requests from /kbin instances. Specifically, a 403 'access denied' is returned when the user agent contains "kbinBot" anywhere in the string. This has been causing a cascade of failures with federation for many server owners, flooding the message...