Spyke

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Call to action - renewed protests starting on July 1st

I really don't get why they're doing this.

Reddit has already showed how much it cares about its users. We've tried going private, we've tried going restricted, we've tried going NSFW, we've tried spamming John Oliver posts, we've tried asking nicely in open letters, and Reddit has consistently given its community the middle finger in every single situation. And now that we've seen the admins change rules, remove mods, ban users, and break privacy laws, the plan is to just do the exact same thing they did before in the hopes that it'll work this time?

If a blackout on the platform was going to get Reddit to change its mind, that would've happened already. The time to induce change was two weeks ago, when the protests had lots of momentum. But it didn't work, and trying to make another stand now is going to be even less effective.

I still think that the best move is to leave Reddit for alternatives like /kbin, Lemmy, and Squabbles. Thankfully, some of the comments on the /r/ModCoord announcement are also saying this. Instead of desperately trying to cling to a platform that doesn't care about you, go somewhere else.

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White to move and mate in... uhh... how did we get here?

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  • White has pawns on the first rank (a1 & b1).
  • White has an unpromoted pawn on the eighth rank (h8).
  • Black has an unpromoted pawn on the first rank (h1).
  • White has three bishops (c1, f1, & d4) while no pawns have promoted.
  • Black has two dark-squared bishops (h4 & f8) while no pawns have promoted.
  • The black and white kings are touching each other.
  • The black king is being attacked but it's white to play.

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I'm starting to see some serious downsides to being able to see who downvotes you.

While that's definitely a notable downside, I think the upsides outweigh it.

For one, being able to see upvotes & downvotes seems to have made a lot of people a bit more thoughtful with handing them out. This obviously isn't the case for everyone — there's still a good bit of downvoting people for disagreeing with the hivemind — but I and others have observed that downvote quality is a lot better here on kbin.social, and I think that vote visibility is a big part of that.

Also, it's also just transparency on kbin.social's part. If votes federate, anyone can set up an instance to view your votes or just go to one that shows them. Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there's nothing stopping them. Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes* on the fediverse can be accessed by the public, and I have no issue with that.

AskKbin

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*Permanently Deleted*

I prefer Kbin. It has the latest features (magazine collections, an aggregate view that combines threads and microblog posts, more options, etc.) , and I really like the developer @ernest. Aside from just being cool, he posts frequent updates over on @kbinDevlog.

Something worth noting is that Kbin doesn't have many instances. Kbin.social is the main one, and the only other decently up-to-date one I know of is kbin.earth, run by the creator of the Interstellar app for Kbin. On the other hand, Mbin has more instances, as most established Kbin instances switched to it at the time it was created (during which Kbin development had been inactive for about a month). Also, Mbin has a more community-oriented development system tmk, whereas Kbin development is closely managed by Ernest.

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RE: Is Ernest still here?

Thanks a ton for the update Ernest! It's great to hear from you, and I hope your health improves soon.

That being said, I do have a few things I'd like to suggest.

--

In February, I spent my time visiting doctors and undergoing treatment with medications, which often had very unpleasant side effects. Therefore, I decided to hold off on any major updates to avoid causing even more chaos.

If I'm interpreting this correctly (i.e., that you chose not to give any updates as to prevent people freaking out), I don't think this was the best move. I understand where you were coming from, but (if you were able) some sort of small status update would've been preferable to a month-long silence (especially since you'd previously said that you'd be unavailable for only 2–4 days). A simple "Hey, I'm currently not doing well. I'll get back to things as soon as I'm feeling better," would've at least let us know that you were alive and that the project hadn't been abandoned.

--

Just because it's not visible that something is happening doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything during this time. In fact, two really significant things have been successful, which I've been working on for a long time and which I intended to announce soon once I recover.

I don't think this whole "holding off for a big announcement" thing is a great approach, at least not now. There are currently several issues that we're waiting to see fixed, and we have no idea which ones (if any) are being worked on. If you must wait for a big reveal though, at least telling us, "I'm still working on stuff" would be better than nothing.

--

And finally, I really suggest getting some more admins for the instance. You're absolutely correct to prioritize your health over Kbin; nevertheless, it's far from ideal for your absence to mean that spam piles up, moderation requests lie unanswered, and accounts can't be deleted. We'd all appreciate it if you could have at least one extra person on deck for whenever you're ill or in need of a break.

--

Thanks again for all you do for Kbin, and I hope things get better!

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MAGA Candidate Says He’s Worried About Babies Who Might Get an Abortion

But Eigel isn’t alone in his condemnation of the bill. Another Republican, Missouri State Senator Sandy Crawford, claimed the incest and rape provision shouldn’t pass because “God is perfect.”

“God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen, bad things happen,” Crawford said. “I’m not gonna be able to support the amendments because I am very pro-life.”

You can't help but appreciate the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance you gotta have to say, "God is perfect," and "…for some reason He allows … bad things [to] happen." How delusional can you be to say that raped children giving birth is part of some perfect, divine plan?

Social conservatism is a complete joke.

AskKbin

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✨ What is your favorite thing about kbin? ✨

Not sure if I can think of a favorite, but here are a few candidates:

  • The fact that Kbin is built for both microblogs and threads. They're neatly distinguished from one another, and the UI accounts for their unique formats. It's very clearly thread aggregation + microblogging, not thread aggregation with microblog posts crammed in there or vice versa.

  • The UI, which is what made me pick it over Lemmy. I just find it a lot cleaner and more pleasant, especially with the Tokyo night theme.

  • The community around userscripts and userstyles, or at least what there was initially. It's dwindled a ton, but it's what got me to learn HTML/CSS. Being able to make a userstyle is also really nice for improving Kbin's UI to my tastes.

  • @ernest. Alongside just being kind, he also keeps us up to date and lets us be involved in the development process. The daily updates on @kbinDevlog have been awesome for seeing and helping the platform develop.

reddit

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What if Reddit joined the Fediverse?

Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

I firmly believe that no instance should harbor a large portion of activity on the fediverse, as it makes it difficult for other instances to defederate from them (as users there would lose a massive portion of the content that they see) and easy for them to take users from other instances by just ceasing to federate (as users on other instances would have to go to the large instance to keep the level of activity their used to). And that's in regards to microblogs like on Mastodon.

With communities, it'd be so much worse.

If Reddit federates, and Lemmy/Kbin instances don't defederate en masse, almost every active community will be on reddit.com. No reason to post on [email protected] with its 5 posts a week when [email protected] has millions of subscribers and thousands upon thousands of active users. Nearly all activity will go to subreddits, the exceptions being from people who have blocked Reddit or on communities pertaining to non-Reddit platforms/instances (e.g., [email protected]). And if Reddit defederates after that, the threadiverse will be a ghost town. People are already (and justifiably) concerned that too many people and big communities are on lemmy.world. Just imagine Reddit coming in with all of its users.

If Reddit federates, it's just gonna straight up be embrace and extinguish — no extend required.