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Apparently Reddit has now banned a subreddit dedicated to the Fediverse Reddit-alternative Kbin:
https://sakurajima.moe/@chikorita157/110517156242412322
If you're on a centralised platform like Reddit, this is what they can do. Centralised platforms have all-powerful leaders who can do whatever they want, and you have no alternatives if you disagree.
The point of the Fediverse being on lots of servers is that each server's power is limited. If you disagree with one server's actions, you can move.
@feditips Thanks for making me aware of Kbin 
I was only previously aware of Lemmy, which (as you've covered yourself) is not really a viable option.
@SleepyCatten @feditips why is kbin more viable than lemmy? i checked kbim just now and at first glance it's both slower and has a less polished interface.
@Beiz @SleepyCatten @feditips There's me thinking the exact opposite 
@feditips
so.. shall we use lemmy more
@jiangshanghan @feditips
Yes we should.
@feditips I don’t think fediverse is going to enter the general vocabulary.
I think it could? Email and the web are open standards in general vocab, and they aren't corporate brand names.
@mauveavenger sounds like the perfect self selection tool then
@feditips since yesterday I didn't even know that such alternative exists. Seems reddit doesn't know about Streisand effect 
@SkierniewiceBoi @feditips dictators always try to control what is communicated in their realm. However, there is always a way around their control. In the end they lose.
@feditips what an admirable bastion of free speech
This is a long read, but it very succinctly explains why these things inevitably always will happen on centralized systems:
Yes! People who enjoy the article should follow the author at @pluralistic
@feditips they're absolutely shameless
@feditips
They really are Twittering this
@feditips@mstdn.social Good to know that #Kbin is excellent enough to be a worthy competitor = threat...
@feditips reminds me of twitter trying to suppress mastodon migration
@feditips@mstdn.social One day those with money will realise that social media is a network of human beings, and that human beings have free will. Attempt to control them and they will find alternatives. Humans are the Internet. Humans are nature, and nature always finds a way. Instead of blocking the Kbin thread they should address the reason for which people are thinking of leaving in the first place.
One day they might. For now they throw methanol on an invisible fire. When night falls they will see the danger and error of their ways (The danger being a loss of user engagement, and user eyeball numbers).
(1/2)
#RedditCensorship takes #Elmo's #BorgSite approach and has area eliminated #Fediverse entry.
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110519237586930084
Act now to protect your content and use the #Fediverse's #FOSS alternative:
#Kbin (1):
EDIT/UPDATE:
I needed to remove #Lemmy as an alternative due to its dubious stance towards human-rights abuses, as explained in the next toot.
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110516948024413608
(1)
You can find further useful information on Kbin...
#JoinTheFediverse.net
#jointhefediverse
@feditips @stefan@stefanbohacek.onli
(2/2)
...gathered by FediTips here:
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110521303082388526
and here
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110521173541159652
PS:
Reason for #Lemmy's removal:
I have removed my indirect endorsement of #Lemmy. They have a very dubious stance towards human rights and do not object people celebrating #Stalin's birthday, a man who directly and indirectly killed 6-9 million people.
Besides, they apparently are die-hard communists, supporting the Kremlin (#tankies).
You are very welcome. I support this decision, but it was not mine to suggest.
I agree with @feditips that it matters greatly who gets the proceeds of #donations and the visibility from sites like yours that, in turn, could generate (marketing) proceeds.
PS: IMPORTANT UPDATE
More serious issues with #Lemmy have surfaced regarding #DataPrivacy, which I have posted in my thread here:
@HistoPol @feditips Thanks but your link is broken: https://mastodon.social/@Histo%E2%80%A6
I could not find the thread in your profile, would you like to share it again here?
Thanks for the notice. I have been experiencing several broken links of mine in my toots today. Strange.
Think I fixed it, but here is the thread again, hope it works this time :
It is in the design, centralised platforms should be discouraged. Its just not safe when going beyond a certain size and also not democratic. Substandard hence. Rules and regulations can help here, given the potential high impact we have seen with these platforms on society…
@feditips guess they really are fearful of people moving off Reddit after all.
Surely they should support a free and open internet...
The idea of people hating and leaving Reddit terrifies them. If Reddit was such a great platform they shouldn't have anything to worry about. Yet years of never delivering on promises has finally and justly come back to haunt them.
@feditips LOL, Reddit going full Twitter.
@feditips sorry for a really dumb question on Kban…how do I sign up with my mastodon user name? What’s the proper format? I keep getting a “match format” message. I’m not sure why I’m struggling with. Mastodon was a breeze compared to this. 
If you want to sign up on another server, you need to create an account on that server.
Your Mastodon account is tied to the Mastodon server where you signed up, you can't use it to sign in on any other server.
It's like with email, you can't use your Gmail account to sign in on Yahoo Mail, even though you can send emails between Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts.
@feditips ok, I think I understand that, but when I look at users on kban it displays their other instance info as well (eg: FEDITIPS @feditips@mastodon.social). I’ve just created a kban account displaying USERNAME @username@kban.social which isn’t what I want. Does that make sense or am I totally missing something. Thanks for your patience, I don’t know why I don’t get this.
The users you can see with other instance info are on other instances. They may not be on Kban at all, or they might be on different Kban servers.
The idea of the Fediverse is people are spread out on thousands of different servers, but the servers communicate seamlessly so that people from many different servers can have conversations together.
You and I are on different servers but we are able to talk like this, because the servers we signed up on communicate with each other.
@feditips ok, Thanks for this.
@feditips @SocialSpirit the bit that's always stumped me is why I've got to have one profile per fedi app rather than a single unified profile. That's the part that isn't seamless.
You don't need an account on every service.
One account will usually let you interact on other services. From your point of view it will look like you're just on Mastodon, but you're actually on other services too.
For example, if you want to comment on a PeerTube video, you can do that from Mastodon. From your point of view it will look like a Mastodon thread, but when you go to the PeerTube video's own page the comment you made on Mastodon will be there.
For example if you go to @theatticdwellers you'll see PeerTube posts, even though they look like Mastodon posts from your point of view. If you like them on Mastodon, it will appear as a thumbs up on PeerTube. If you reply to one of those videos, it will appear as a comment on PeerTube.
@feditips @SocialSpirit but if I have a @pixelfed account because I prefer an Instagram like interface - I suddenly can't see text posts at all. So if I want text posting and to be able to upload photos... But I also want pixelfed to be my app of choice there is currently no way to do that without multiple accounts with no way of unifying them under one persona.
It sounded more like they want full user access rights on all #Fediverse projects with one account on one instance. Upload videos to any #PeerTube instance, upload songs to any #Funkwhale pod, upload podcasts to any #Castopod instance, create and moderate communities/magazines on any #Lemmy or #kbin instance, create and moderate public and private forums on any instance of #Friendica, #Hubzilla or #Streams, create and edit articles and wikis on any Hubzilla hub and so forth. All only with one login on one instance of one project, preferably #Mastodon.
This simply is technologically impossible. It's like having a user account on one phpBB forum and still being able to post on every forum in existence, regardless of whether it runs phpBB or vBulletin or Discourse or Flarum or whatever.
In order to have full user rights on any one Fediverse instance, you will need an account there. Even if there was a unified login system so that you actually log into 20,000+++++ Fediverse instances when you log into one, you'll still need an account.
This would mean two things.
For one, whenever a newbie comes over from Twitter to Mastodon, and they create an account on mastodon.social, accounts on all other instances of all other Fediverse projects must be created automatically with the same credentials.
Now you might say, "I don't need an account on EVERY instance!" No, but you MAY need an account on this instance or that instance because you've just stumbled upon it, and you want to use it as if you have an account there. And ANY instance out there could be "this instance or that instance".
Besides, whenever an aspiring admin starts up a new instance of any Fediverse project for the first time, and be it something fairly obscure like (streams) which only supports #ActivityPub as an optional plug-in, it would immediately have to create 12,000,000++ user accounts automatically so that every Fediverse user has full user rights on this one particular instance as well. I mean, someone on #Akkoma could find your one-minute-old (streams) instance and decide it's a nice place for a public forum.
I think it's clear that this is unrealistic.
@jupiter_rowland so I'm a tech person who likes photography and runs a blog.
I've got WordPress with activity pub, need Mastodon for text posts, but thoroughly enjoy the interface of Pixelfed where I may post photos.
If someone replies to me on any of the others I won't be notified on my main account. Where is my main one even? There's not even a way to see my blog and pixelfed content under one feed because I'll "appear" as three different people regardless.
I guess I've not seen a way to link the three together and say "this is me" as a whole. Merely appearing as three different accounts in three different worlds posting three or more content types.
The practical solution for this would be for your Mastodon account to follow both your Pixelfed account and your WordPress blog.
The "one login for everything" approach would require total centralisation of the whole #Fediverse. Not only would separate projects have to be merged into one gigantic, omnipotent monster of a project, but the concept of separate distributed instances would have to disappear, too. One central all-knowing login for everything would require one central database for everything.
And whoever owns this database would have full control over the entire Fediverse.
@jupiter_rowland I'm not saying one login, but for the apps to at least be conscious that duplicate profiles on other services exist would be nice.
Like can you imagine a celebrity being here and having like seven accounts across each different service and a fan not knowing which one to actually follow because they all have the same username and profile picture? Sounds like a disaster to me.
Either there would have to be one central server which all instances of all projects communicate with, where they can look up user identities. It's a very bad idea already to make any one Fediverse project, e.g. Mastodon, depend on central infrastructure. It'd be even worse if the whole Fediverse with dozens upon dozens of independent projects and tens of thousands of independent instances depended on central infrastructure and essentially ceased to work properly without it.
Or all instances of all projects would have to communicate with each other directly. In order to be able to do that, they would have to know all other instances, regardless of project. All of them. No exception.
So let's suppose I return to self-hosting my own Hubzilla hub like I've done in the past. I set up a virtual machine. I install a LAMP stack. I install Hubzilla on it. I configure it. I start the Web server up for the first time. And my Hubzilla hub would have to know all instances of all Fediverse projects out there immediately. Yes, including the brand-spanking-new MissKey instance someone just spun up for the first time in Nagoya 30 seconds earlier. And that new MissKey instance would have to know my own new Hubzilla hub as soon as I start it up.
For one, this is another thing that's technologically impossible unless each Fediverse project comes with a full list of all instances right away upon install. A list that's provided separately but still pulled in automatically during installation. A list that would have to be automatically updated by each instance of each project every few seconds in order to really always cover the entire Fediverse. With tens of thousands of instances pulling this list in every few seconds, the list would require its own data centre in order not to be DDoS'd to kingdom come.
By the way, even that wouldn't make sure that all Fediverse instances know all other Fediverse instances. Some instances would never have this list because their admins don't update them anymore, mostly small private instances. There are even active instances of entire projects that are dead, that aren't maintained anymore. There's at least one operational Osada instance, there are at least two operational Zap instances, and both projects had their end-of-life on New Year's Eve 2022. They might make it onto the list, but they won't have the list implemented themselves.
Oh, and you can't do that through the apps as in what's installed on people's mobile phones either. This would require every installation of every mobile app on every smartphone and every tablet to know all instances of all projects in the Fediverse, regardless of whether they can practically be used with these projects or not (good luck using Mobilizon through Mona). Instances pushing their data to mobile apps would be even worse: Each instance of each project would have to know every installation of every mobile app on every mobile device out there. Right away after starting up for the first time. Like, I spin up my brand-new Hubzilla hub, and it knows right away what you've got on your phone so that it can advertise its presence and all channels on it to all the apps on your phone. And to millions of other phones out there.
See, I'm a tech guy myself. But my view of the Fediverse is not that of a bunch of iPhone apps with some murky magic happening in the background. I used to self-host Friendica and Hubzilla on a Linux machine which I've built from parts myself; most of the time, they actually ran on Debian virtual machines on a Manjaro host system. I started using Friendica early on when it was still named Friendika, and that was 2011. And I access all Fediverse projects I use through Web browsers on Linux desktop computers and laptops. So I guess I know the technological background pretty well.
@jupiter_rowland you're putting a lot of effort into a comment I just dropped in passing. But here goes:
I know all my accounts and can link to each of them and arrest cryptographically that they're all the same. All an app would need to do is realise that my 2-3 Coo-Ops accounts are all the same and display them as if they were one.
Mastodon, as in the Web server application which infosec.exchange is running on a headless Linux server? Likewise, the Pixelfed Web server application and the ActivityPub plug-in for Wordpress?
Or the end-user mobile apps which you're using to access them?
If it's the latter, what you need would be a hypothetical mobile app that supports all Fediverse projects all the same with all their features and unite the timelines/streams of multiple accounts on different projects into one.
Now, the first requirement would be tough. Just for your use-case, the app would have to support all features of Mastodon and all features of Pixelfed. For WordPress, reading comments and replying to them would be sufficient. I'm not talking about writing and publishing blog posts, although supporting Plume and WriteFreely would cover this.
But there are even more Fediverse projects which this app would have to support. I've already mentioned Plume and WriteFreely which would require a long-form blog post editor with Markdown highlighting (and/or real-time rendering) support.
In order to really cover everything of everything, the app would also have to support every last one of Hubzilla's features. And Hubzilla is a feature monster whose power can ever-so-barely be harnessed through its own Web interface.
Let me scratch the surface a bit: The long-form blog post editor would be needed again, not for regular posts, but for articles, and then it'd have to support Hubzilla's expanded implementation of BBcode. A fully featured frontend for Hubzilla's wiki engine with support for expanded BBcode, Markdown and the necessary wiki bits would be necessary, as well as an online file space manager with special support for images, a calendar editor for Hubzilla's two separate calendar engines, one of which uses CalDAV and could theoretically tie into your phone's calendar (you'll also need the calendar frontend for Friendica, (streams) and Mobilizon), an editor for Hubzilla's CardDAV-based address book which could theoretically tie into that on your phone, a website editor that supports Markdown, HTML and expanded BBcode, frontends for Hubzilla apps such as Superblock and so forth.
All this would have to be crammed into one and the same mobile app. All this and more from other projects. Aside from supporting all Fediverse projects, the app would require a lot of extra functionality for account/channel management, for which timelines/streams to merge with which (power users with multiple identities may still want to have multiple separate timelines/streams, also to keep them somewhat uncluttered) and so forth. And the app would still have be fairly easy to use.
However, if what you refer to as an "app" is the server-side application running on the Debian-powered rack irons in the data centres and the Raspberry Pis that run personal instances at home, I'd really like to know how all of them are supposed to know about all others of them, which users are on which instances.
